Hadrian’s Rage, by Patricia Marie Budd, is a fascinating upside-down look at a 22nd century country in part of what was Canada. In Hadrian’s country, homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is frowned upon and, until recently, illegal. Hadrian was named after the gay Roman emperor and his goal is population control and environmental restoration. Heterosexuals are blamed both for attacking homosexuals and for the overpopulation of the earth, which is why scientists have genetically altered humans to make them homosexual, although some still have heterosexual or bisexual tendencies. While it is not illegal to be heterosexual, anyone caught having heterosexual sex is sentenced to death because of the danger that overpopulation poses to the country and the world.

However, there are those with heterosexual tendencies. Before the novel begins, Todd Middleton, a popular basketball player, was one of them. When he was caught having sex with his friend Crystal Albright, he was sent to a re-education camp where the camp director used extreme measures to try to erase his heterosexual feelings, including rape. Desperate, Todd begged his best friend, Frank Hunter, to have mercy on killing him. Frank did, and as a result, Frank is now serving a life sentence in Hadrian’s army. (These events occurred in Hadrian’s Lover, of which Hadrian’s Rage is a sequel, although it is also a standalone novel.)

Such is the situation when Hadrian’s Rage opens. Frank Hunter’s family has been torn apart, his parents, Geoffrey and Dean, have separated because Dean, who also underwent re-education in his youth, is now unwilling to deny his heterosexual tendencies. Dean has become part of a Gay-Straight Alliance on a college campus. Meanwhile, a member of Adriano’s media is no longer willing to promote gay propaganda against heterosexuals. Melissa Eagleton, head host of the national news, quits her job when the station owner wants her to promote his agenda instead of letting her report the truth. When Melissa establishes a rival station, new opinions begin to be expressed on Adriano. At the same time, heterosexual people begin to appear in public, holding hands, and as a result, they are attacked. And then a young college student, Tara May Fowler, is brutally beaten to death after coming out directly to two other girls she thought were her friends. Amid all this chaos, will Hadrian be able to survive, or will he collapse and allow hordes of straight people seeking to break through his walls to take over and destroy the land?

Author Patricia Budd has done an amazing job not only imagining a world of reverse discrimination, but bringing home the fact that this world is a weak metaphor for ours. Throughout the novel, he provides footnotes that reference real-life events in recent years that are the basis for the novel’s scenes. For example, the death of Tara May Fowler is based on the brutal murder of Vladislav Tornovoi, who was raped with beer bottles, tortured and murdered by two of his friends on Friday, May 10, 2013 in Volgograd, Russia, after leaving from the closet. they as gay. The book is dedicated to the memory of Tornovoi.

Patricia Budd certainly knows how to create an intriguing fictional world. The reader observes how badly Adriano’s people behave, despite their good intentions, and is both saddened and shocked to think that such things are happening in our own world today. Budd’s pacing is fabulous, with short chapters and news reports to keep the reader constantly wondering what will come next. It also does an excellent job juggling multiple plots and characters so the reader is never bored. Most importantly, it creates realistic and endearing characters who seek the truth in their hearts and then find the courage to act on it. Readers will fall in love with Destiny Stuttgart, the last of Hadrian’s founding families, who stands up for what she thinks is right, even when people say it goes against the country’s constitution and dismisses her as old and senile. And then there are the characters whose hearts are in conflict, who want revenge but fall in love with their enemies. In the end, the novel offers a deep and moving expression of how overcoming prejudice and opening up to forgiveness can change the world.

I thought Budd’s previous book Hadrian’s Lover was a powerful and very imaginative novel, but Budd has now replaced it. Hadrian’s Rage leaves me in awe. I don’t think anyone reading this book will ever forget it, and hopefully it will help change the world, one heart at a time.