As we kick off 2025, it might not be the best idea to be reminded of just how divided the world is. However, it makes great fodder for a master of horror like Clay McLeod Chapman, who deeply examines this divide in his latest release, WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES.

Noah Fairchild begins to receive bizarre phone messages from his mother. Each one gets considerably more disturbing, with the final few ending with warnings for him to wake up and open his eyes. He realizes that he needs to leave his safe Brooklyn brownstone and his wife and child behind to pay a visit to his parents in Richmond, Virginia. Noah attempts to have his brother, who lives nearby, get involved. But he is going through strange issues within his own family.

"WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES is certainly not a feel-good read by any stretch of the imagination, but it does raise both awareness and questions about our society."

Upon entering his parents’ home, Noah finds it in serious disarray. Every television in the house is on and blaring the Fax News Network. The host is screaming at the screen, amongst other odd behaviors, and seems to have his parents in some sort of trance. The trance quickly breaks, and their demeanor changes to ruthless, unbridled violence as Noah must defend himself against his parents, who attempt to rip him apart. He investigates other news networks, including CNN and his trusted source, Anderson Cooper, and it appears that similar attacks are occurring all over the country. Beyond that, some areas are so out of control that wild mobs have taken to the streets attacking anyone not belonging to their numbers.

The ideology being presented here by Chapman purports that the far right have become homicidal maniacs seeking to destroy anyone with a contrary perspective. What starts as mere speculative horror devolves into an end-of-the-world situation where an escaping Noah, now in the company of his young nephew Marcus, attempt to traverse the landscape of the East Coast --- from Viriginia back to New York --- in the hopes that they can safely arrive at his Brooklyn brownstone.

The violence depicted here is as extreme as the subversive ideas behind them. Chapman mixes in several social media posts and various news clips to deliver on the madness consuming the nation, some of which is quite disturbing. The most frightening thing about the book is not that the action within might be plausible, but that it uncomfortably holds up a mirror to our own society and asks us to question everything that is causing the current divide within the global population.

WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES is certainly not a feel-good read by any stretch of the imagination, but it does raise both awareness and questions about our society. It also is told in expert speculative horror fashion by McLeod, which allows the thoughts and images to linger and make readers pray that it never actually gets this bad in the real world.