I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

A young woman living in a world where the past is forbidden as entities known as Headmasters control people’s bodies for manual labor shockingly discovers memories of another person rising to her mind, as secrets about how to defeat the Headmasters begins to work their way into her life in author Mark Morton’s “The Headmasters”.

The Synopsis

How do you learn from the past if there isn’t one?

Sixty years ago, something awful happened. Something that killed everyone except the people at Blue Ring. Something that caused the Headmasters to appear. But Maple doesn’t know what is was. Because talking about the past is forbidden.

Everyone at Blue Ring has a Headmaster. They sink their sinewy coils into your skull and control you, using your body for backbreaking toil and your mind to communicate with each other. When someone dies, their Headmaster transfers to someone new. But so do the dead person’s memories, and if one of those memories surfaces in the new host’s mind, their brain breaks. That’s why talking about the past is forbidden.

Maple hates this world where the past can’t exist and the future promises only more suffering. And she hates the Headmasters for making it that way. But she doesn’t know how to fight them – until memories start to surface in her mind from someone who long ago came close to defeating the Headmasters.

But whose memories are they? Why aren’t they harming her? And how can she use them to defeat the Headmasters? Maple has to find the answers herself, unable to tell anyone what she’s experiencing or planning—not even Thorn, the young man she’s falling in love with. Thorn, who has some forbidden secrets of his own . . .

The Review

What a thrilling and enthralling sci-fi and dystopian YA read. The author did an incredible job of world-building here, allowing the mystery of these creatures and the fall of mankind to take hold in the reader’s mind as they are introduced to the mythos of this narrative. The Headmasters themselves are genuinely chilling, and the society they have made for themselves through humanity is disturbing and creepy, allowing the terror they represent to sink in for the reader, much like the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers film. 

Yet the character development helped make the grander sci-fi elements of the story feel alive and engaging on the page. The emotional core of Maple and Thorn’s journey together and the losses they incur over time will resonate with readers, and the visceral imagery the author brings into play will stay with readers long after the story ends, giving the protagonist a narrative that is both exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

The Verdict

Memorable, thrilling, and entertaining author Mark Morton’s “The Headmasters” is a must-read sci-fi and dystopian YA read. The emotional and engaging journey the protagonist goes on and the epic world-building mixed with the spine-chilling terror of the Headmasters made this a one-of-a-kind and a great start to the 2024 season for sci-fi and YA readers everywhere. If you haven’t yet, be sure to grab your copy today!

Rating: 10/10

About the Author

MARK MORTON is also the author of four works of nonfiction: Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award); The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also the author of more than 50 columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He currently works at the University of Waterloo. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time. The Headmasters is his first YA novel.