Why we’re excited
In 2075 the Senecan Games pit online-nominated sinners against each other until only one survives. Wolfie Anderson-Spencer, an Oxford archivist of millennial internet culture, finds old memes disappearing from his files. Pulling at that thread leads him to a cult massacre, a cancelled pop star and Dolores, a young woman big tech has never tracked.
Olivie Blake is best known for The Atlas Six. This standalone satire moves her from dark academia to a near future built from today's online habits. Readers who like their dystopias funny and sharp should be watching for it.
On our most-anticipated list since 21 October 2026. See all the most anticipated books →
What to know about NEWPHORIA!
We have reviewed 5 of Olivie Blake’s books, with an average score of 3.9 out of 5. The one we rated highest is Girl Dinner (4★); the most recent is Dreamland.
It sits at No. 12 on our August 2027 most-anticipated list, which ranks the month's books by how many readers have saved them.
From the publisher
From New York Times bestselling author Olivie Blake comes NEWPHORIA!, a playful yet biting dystopian satire about what happens if we get the future we deserve.
It's 2075 and time once again for the annual Senecan Games, a fight-to-the-death tournament in which the sinful are contestants, as nominated online by their neighbors, mutuals, and IRL friends. But who has time to stream murder games in this economy?
Just as the Senecan begins, Wolfie Anderson-Spencer, an archival researcher of millennial culture at Oxford, discovers historical memes may have been erased from his carefully curated files. As his forebears would highly sus!
This seemingly individual IT issue leads Wolfie to the sinister discovery of outwardly unrelated secrets, including a survivalist cult’s mysterious massacre, a pop star’s cancellation and election to the first Senecan games, and a lonely young woman named Dolores who has managed to avoid the watchful eye of big tech—until now. She just may be the only hope of saving humanity from the dark web of exploitation that we unwittingly opted into.
Moving back and forth in time, from the makeshift swamps of London to the abandoned ruins of the Central California coast, NEWPHORIA! is an eccentric, character-driven novel that explores technofeudalism, the dopamine hit of clicking "buy," and what happens if we actually get the future we deserve.
“Blake proves herself witty, stylish and unafraid of big ideas.”—New York Times Book Review
Description supplied by the publisher.
We haven’t read NEWPHORIA! yet. When our review goes up, it will replace this page.
