Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho

17-year-old Jasper is drifting in a dysfunctional world where portals to hell regularly open up and spew aggressive demons on the despondent population. To safeguard the people, the Vanguard Military Corporation patrols the cities and guards the hell portals, one of which is barricaded off in aisle nine of Jasper’s workplace, the Here For You Mart.

Some years prior, Jasper lost his parents to a hell portal, and he now suffers from amnesia after an accident at the HFY Mart. To compound his anguish, he and Kyle, a Vanguard recruit stationed in the HFY Mart, both have premonitions of a coming apocalypse, and decide they have to try to prevent it, before it occurs during the Black Friday shopping mayhem.

Jasper’s inkling about his previous involvement with Kyle adds emotional interest, and anyone who has worked in retail will appreciate Cho’s take on entitled customers and angry bosses. Aisle Nine is full-on adventure with a fun dig at rampant consumerism and accepting a ‘new-normal’ as the world we know starts to fall apart.

The control that the Vanguard Corp has over the population and the dangers they face every day should make this a dystopian read, but Cho has subverted the genre with satire and absurdity. The growing relationship between Jasper and Kyle, and the incongruity of the demons make the novel more ‘humour’ than ‘horror’. Themes of ‘overcoming personal issues and hopelessness’ and ‘being there for others’ add a human element, and the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of retail employment is fun to read.

Themes: Future, Apocalypse, Friendship.

Margaret Crohn