Looking for new dystopian novels to add to your TBR pile? Books that lean more toward satire than romance? Then I’ve got some new releases for you! And this week’s list is extra special, because it includes a book from yours truly!
First up…
No One Dies
by Robert Pagano
The person who created a way to upload your memories so that you can download them again into a new body is killed and revived only to find out that the government stole his tech and he’s missing a month of memories.
What you’ll find inside: Good intentions and bad deeds, psychological depth, a downward spiral.
All the billionaires in the world are killed by perfectly functioning machines they owned, and their wealth is distributed evenly to everyone who remains… now what?
What you’ll find inside: Multiple POVs, “eat the rich” perspective, first book in a series.
In a country that’s trading freedom for the efficiency of a biometric police state, ten citizens must choose between the tenuous safety of their known but deteriorating world and the uncertain potential of a new but unknown reality.
What you’ll find inside: Multiple POVs, fiction that pulls no punches, first book in a trilogy.
That rounds out our list of new releases to read if you love dystopian satire. But if you burn through all of these this weekend and find yourself wanting a palette cleanser, I have a cozy fantasy series that will probably make you laugh. You can check out Corbin Kohl here.
In the first half of 2026, I was spending a lot of time thinking about the massive transition we all seem to be navigating.
If you feel like the world you loved is vanishing and turning into something you do not want—that no one wants—leaving you to navigate a landscape that no longer makes sense—you are not alone. You are not crazy. You are simply in the middle of a transition.
We all are.
But…
Why is this happening?
How do we get through it?
How will it end?
I felt compelled to explore these questions
It seemed to me that people felt powerless in part because they couldn’t imagine change—both what it might look like when it was done or how to get there. So I put some characters into our world and propelled them toward a cliff to find out what would happen if we don’t change—and what’s possible if we do.
The characters aren’t just trying to survive a financial and societal collapse. That’s the first step, sure, but not the only one. The next steps are even harder:
How do they reclaim their sovereignty in a world that has convinced them they don’t have any?
How do they maintain their sovereignty and their humanity when it’s time to rebuild and the old “poisoned bricks” of control are the only tools they’ve ever known?
Finding a Path Forward
At some point it occurred to me that, in a very real sense, we are all living in the second-ish of three stages in a massive, collective Rite of Passage.
So when I started to write the trilogy, I broke the characters’ journey down into three stages—the stages of a rite of passage—to help me map their journey toward freedom:
Stage 1: Separation — The terrifying moment of realizing the system isn’t “broken”—it’s functioning exactly as it was designed, and to survive it you have to detach.
Stage 2: Liminality — The space between worlds, where you are free from the old system consciously but your body still has to live with in it and your subconscious is still reacting to its fearmongering and its “official” truths.
Stage 3: Incorporation — The act of co-creating a new order based on love, freedom, and individual sovereignty, rather than by fear, violence, and control.
It is Possible…
There are 3 mindset shifts that help—and might just be necessary—to get through each stage of a rite-of-passage transition: from the terrifying Separation of the old world, through the anxious uncertainty of the Liminal space, to the scary and satisfying moments of Reincorporation. A mere three shifts can help us get through the first two stages so that by the time we’re in the Reincorporation stage, we’re not just surviving but helping to create the new beginning.
Because it’s never just about surviving. It’s about thriving. It’s about freedom and personal sovereignty. I wanted to prove to myself that sovereignty can emerge in impactful ways when things look the most bleak and survival and conformity are no longer enough.
I wanted to capture that precise moment when someone finally stops looking for permission, stops playing by the “official” rules, and realizes that they have been free all along—and that they can act on that freedom even now.
The Result is The Epoch Rite of Passage
The Epoch Rite of Passage trilogy is for readers who wish 1984 could have ended another way. It was inspired by ICE in Minnesota and by a comment I read that was made to Disney after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended. It said, “Didn’t you watch Andor? It’s your own show!” It occurred to me that maybe, for some people, when a story’s world is too far removed from the real world, the themes don’t always hit home as strongly as they could. So the trilogy is set in the real world—today’s real world—as much as possible.
Also important to me was ending the trilogy in a better place than it started without having to resort to violence. Too many dystopian stories end violently, which I’ve always found disheartening. It took me three books to move the “High States,” a fictional country that looks a lot like the early 2026 United States, from a growing fascist state into something more free, but I did eventually get the characters there.
