Published: May 5, 2026
Publisher: Soho Press
Series: N/A
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 448 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 4 Stars
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
In this gripping, moving, and genre-blending speculative debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two rookie agents from the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs are dispatched to small-town Kansas to investigate a woman who claims to have returned from Spontaneous Human Absence, offering answers that could change everything.
People are “popping”—disappearing, one by one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.
Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.
A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.
A resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.
I was really excited to check out this unusual speculative fiction story about a version of our world where people began randomly disappearing. What would it be like if people could randomly ‘pop’ out of existence? What sort of changes would our society undergo? Absence impressed me with how well thought out so many aspects of this plague would play out.
Absence follows Harvey Ellis, a young agent for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, who is assigned to investigate the supposed ‘return’ of a woman who popped years previously in a small Kansas town. He and his partner, Shonda, expect this to be a problematic case as all claims of return are but they really don’t know what they’re getting into. The town of Dawnville used to be a declared ‘Safe’ zone and the very public disappearance destroyed that façade. There were issues of police corruption, covered up ‘pops’, possible human trafficking, and so much more going on. Now they’re dealing with a town that has suffered with depopulation for years and the supposed return of the woman who started it all. Locals aren’t happy and once the multitude of cults get wind it turns into quite the party.
I thought Absence was a very interesting book in terms of premise and as mentioned previously, how well thought out it was. I even liked Harvey and Shonda, though I thought their work fling was mostly unnecessary even while it served to highlight how traditional relationships have changed since the phenomenon of spontaneous human absence began. I think if you’re looking for an interesting bit of sci-fi that leans toward the bureaucratic rather than the X-Files this might be the book for you. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my expectations for how the story would play out were subverted, though I did find that the plot did start to grow a little tedious in parts. Overall, I liked this pretty well and I’m glad I took a chance on it.
Powder & Page 
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