Synopsis
From the author of Man, F*ck This House (And Other Disasters)
Two feuding #VanLife influencers must put aside their differences in order to survive when they are stalked by a masked killer in a remote stretch of Death Valley.
Morgan and Jasper are the couple everyone wants to be: beautiful, successful, and constantly mobile. Their #VanLife content has captured the hearts and minds of a million online followers, who all “smash that subscribe button” to watch as the loving couple documents their outdoor adventures.
But it’s all a sham. Their relationship is on the rocks. Jasper doesn’t know Morgan’s trolling the dating apps. Morgan doesn’t know Jasper blew all their earnings on shady crypto investments. Half the time, they don’t even sleep in the van, instead retreating to separate motel rooms. What started as a fun way to share their love of nature has turned into a grind. Plus, they’ve also got stalkers: fans whose parasocial obsession with the couple verges on the terrifying.
When Jasper gets a contract to shoot a promo for an upstart granola company at the Ubehebe Crater, a gorgeous but remote section of Death Valley, he talks Morgan into taking one last trip. He’s secretly hoping this trip will not only solve their financial woes but also help them reconcile. But things go wrong immediately. A mysterious black van runs them off the road. Their cameraman seems like a lunatic. And soon, they find themselves stranded in the desert, pursued by a masked killer. Can Morgan and Jasper put aside their differences long enough to survive both the killer and the desert itself?
Review
Brian Asman introduces a new horror slasher villain to the canon with the Dust Devil, a masked, desert camo-wearing, knife-wielding psychopath who targets a particular type of influencer in #VanDeath.
Asman kicks things off in grand fashion, with a viscerally brutal opener that puts readers right in the thick of things with its short-lived second-person POV and braces them on what to expect of the violent thrills ahead. It’s a terrific, blood-soaked segment of 100% pure slasher goodness, made all the better with its sense of immediacy. Of course, Asman has to take his foot off the gas soon thereafter to introduce us to our central characters, van life influencers Jasper and Morgan.
Jasper has just squandered their entire life savings on a cryptocurrency scam (is there any other kind?) but plans on making it up to Morgan by asking for her hand in marriage. I mean, how could she say no, right?! Morgan, meanwhile, is surfing Tinder to see who else is out there, intent on ditching Jasper and, more importantly, this whole goofy van life thing she’s grown increasingly sick of. Both are young, and their relationship together is the longest either has ever had. Although they seem a bit young for a midlife crisis, both are definitely going through it.
Morgan gets sucked into one last ride when Jasper, in the hopes of recovering their lost funds, signs a sponsorship deal with Granular, the brainchild of some techbro kids hellbent on being, get this, “granola disrupters,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. All they have to do is wear some merch and eat some granola during some staged photo and video ops, with Granular providing them the cameraman and the #VanLife couple the location. Jasper picks a place far off the beaten path – the massive Ubehebe crater in Death Valley. I had to look it up and, yeah, I gotta admit, it is pretty ‘grammable, and yes, a few real-life YouTubers have picked it as a scenic spot to hike and mine for clicks. As far as I know they’ve made it back home safe and sound, free of any Dust Devil troubles.
Jasper and Morgan – or Jorgan, if you’re nasty – aren’t so lucky. Their trip to the crater involves being nearly run off the road by a black van, learning about various reports of missing hikers, and encountering a handful of red herrings and suspects-cum-victims while being terrorized by the Death Valley Demon. Asman crafts several chilling encounters, racking up the body count and removing Jasper and Morgan’s options, driving them into various dead ends with a chess master’s proficiency. One extended sequence involves trapping the couple in their own quarter of a million-dollar van while the Dust Devil toys with them from the outside. This a multi-chapter affair reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s Cujo, not to mention various other slasher stories where the good guys find themselves on the back foot and being toyed with and terrorized. It’s a great moment, and one of the book’s more memorable sequences, of which there’s a few. Asman keeps things tense and tightly-wound, refusing to ever let our leads catch a break and mercilessly snuffing out every single minor hope they have of being rescued or finding safety. It’s pretty brutal seeing every plan they have to counter the Dust Devil’s increasingly sadistic cat-and-mouse games dwindle into hopelessness, be cut off (sometimes literally!), or just plain fail due to awful, dumb luck.
While the Dust Devil presents as a highly effective, and exceedingly nutso, killer, it is – of course – Jasper and Morgan that are the book’s true beating heart. Both are fundamentally flawed, imperfect human beings, and they’ve hurt one another in secret ways. They each want different things for themselves and their future, and whether or not they can find a common middle ground to reignite the spark that impassioned them as a couple is central. Presuming one of them doesn’t first get hacked to death in the desert, in the most brutal of fashions, of course. Asman brilliantly humanizes both characters, making both equally sympathetic. We get their different points of view, their competing concerns, and their hopes. What works best about their dynamic is that we understand both of them so well. Their wants and desires, for themselves and for their future, whether it’s together or apart, are simply understandable. Lesser authors would perhaps feel compelled to pick a side here, or make one character stand-offish or shrewish, wanting readers to side with one or the other. Because Asman takes his time to flesh them out and give equal merit to both, we want to see them succeed together.
Less surface-level, but certainly providing food for thought, is the gimmicky nature of the influencer’s working life here in late-stage capitalism, with all its shiny, new, ten-dollar buzzwords, attention-grabbing hashtags, out there ideas to capture people’s attentions, and brand appeal necessities. The fact that Jasper and Morgan are challenging themselves, questioning whether or not their career choice is not only financially stable but one that even makes sense, let alone allows them happiness anymore, instantly makes them less vapid and more familiar than your typical social media hustler. Neither really want to sell themselves with the Granular brand, nor do they want to pose for all these fake moments amidst nature’s towering, powerful reality, but money’s money and bills don’t pay themselves.
Asman finds the humanity beneath the glossy, picture-perfect, and entirely false narratives built between social media superstars, the brands that employ them, and their followers and hangers-on. Is it morally good, sustainable, and ethically responsible to traverse an incredibly expensive gas guzzling van into Earth’s furthest removed locations simply to create clickable content to help hustle some techbro’s latest goofy-ass, probably society-destroying, bullshit in an ever-dwindling, increasingly vapid attention economy that is ultimately contributing to the scarcity of real-world resources and collapsing ecosystems? Are Jasper and Morgan victims of their own success, or is the Dust Devil a Luigi Mangione-style folk hero to be for the social media age? OK, maybe that last bit is going to a smidge too far, but still… I’m just saying, if you’re a big-time social media content creator, maybe keep an eye out for a black van following you around, yeah?
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