Declan Finn
Jul 15, 2026
Fighting back against The Spirit of the Age.
I hang out with a lot of political writers. And the most common form of political writing lately is the distopia, or perhaps dystopia, depending on who's writing it. And dear God, I am sick of them. Granted, there have been some solid ones. Daniella Bova's Tears of Paradox, which honestly looked something like it was out of Walker Percy than anything else. There's Ordinance 93, that was mostly an action thriller with heavy espionage elements than a dystopia. There's every John Ringo novel, where the world seems to be in danger of being destroyed at some point. But for every one of those readable, entertaining dystopias, there are easily ten that don’t make the cut. Or drive me to tears of frustration. Or drive me insane. I don't even finish them, because I can't. Honestly, it's either the despair, or the writing, and the occasional “Why am I not doing something fun, like having a root canal?” And then a friend of mine, Marina Fontaine, wanted me to look at Chasing Freedom. Finally, at long last, something fun. And this one is a dystopia that's easy to digest, easy to read, and **simply enjoyable.**
