Habitat is a finely tuned device for reflecting on the violence of our present. Across nine stories, Case Q. Kerns considers the effects of oppressive economic and social systems, conservation, cloning, cults of personality, the erasure of Indigenous perspectives, and more. Each of us, Habitat suggests, struggles against the same circumstances, our stories refracted in similar ways. There’s the low-key opener, “The Man Who Knew the Collage,” which follows Hector and his relationship with his employers’ son, who mutilates himself in order to receive transplants of others’ body parts. And there’s “Potluck Barbecue,” the story of a couple struggling to position their daughter (and, by extension, themselves) for success in an imbalanced socioeconomic lottery. Or “The Book Preacher,” the story of a sibling’s desperate search for their brother and their dangerous encounter with a charlatan. Or “Our Day WiIl Come,” which follows Jolene, who sold her limbs to support her daughter, as she is released from prison and attempts to reconnect with her daughter. In order to really grapple with its vision of structural violence, Habitat stitches these stories together into a tapestry. The stories wander, sometimes not far enough, occasionally far afield, to bring a welcome complexity to the book’s considerations. Habitat is not a perfect spread of stories, but it is often surprising, tongue-in-cheek, and startling along the way.
Habitat makes use of a curious and compelling tool to explore its world: the short story cycle. This approach will be familiar to anyone who has seen a Marvel movie in the last fifteen years, but it’s a much older trick than that: Habitat is in good company with novels like Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson and Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra. These books are constellations of short stories, frequently featuring different characters, forms, styles, genres, and perspectives, all contributing to a unified narrative or idea. It is hard to imagine a narrative strategy more suited to thinking through the world as it currently exists: churning and ever expanding, change frustrated and reality obfuscated. Habitat’s multifaceted approach is key to the success of its smart, alarming explorations.
It can also be difficult, given the circumstances, to craft fiction that effectively pokes and prods at the real world’s cruelty and hypocrisy, but Habitat’s sincere focus on the mundane aspects of its characters’ lives keeps everything in perspective. The structure of the novel provides an arena and context for its ideas, and its language and style ensure that it remains grounded and focused against that backdrop.
The language of “Armstrong,” for instance, is clean, direct, and measured. It follows a couple as they weigh whether to purchase a clone of Armstrong, the dog from their daughter’s favorite TV program. One of the benefits of the book’s braided structure is that the reader already knows about cloning (and Phyla, one of the companies responsible for it) from other stories. That means “Armstrong,” no longer burdened with that piece of worldbuilding, is free to hone in on the family’s economic circumstances—and the sinister quality of their discomfort and desperation. That tight focus on personal stakes is on display throughout, even in “The Lodging of Tigers,” which follows Marla, a woman working for Phyla to secure an endangered species of tiger. Marla’s mission is high stakes, likely related to the cloning that makes “Armstrong” possible, but “Lodging” largely focuses on Marla’s relationships with the people in her life: the nervous coworker along for the ride, the hardened local who is keeping them safe, her ex back home. It isn’t even immediately clear how “Lodging” fits in with the rest of the stories. A reader, trying to piece the book together, might experience real friction with the stories and how they unfurl. But Kerns holds steady. Habitat is better for it.
There are thrilling moments when the structure’s pleasures are undeniable, when all the pieces of Kerns’ project start to come together. Much of Habitat focuses on the environments prepared for people: marriage, family, studies, jobs, science fiction bunkers. It’s deeply interested in how these environments shape behavior, the opportunities participants are afforded, how tightly an unseen hand grips the very root of possibility. There is a cartoonish quality to the corporations’ presence in these stories—the cloning, the level of oppression, the mutilation and humiliation many of these characters experience to survive their respective corners of this world. There is almost no accounting for the horror the corporations inflict. But there are no explanations for how Phyla and the rest have become so ubiquitous and all-powerful, they simply are—cancerous and essential pieces of infrastructure dictating the parameters of these characters’ lives.
Habitat describes the world’s violence with a sharp clarity, through its fraying, overlapping structure and the intimacy of its stories. Kerns remains laser-focused throughout on all of the technological and systemic violence looming over our heads. There is no doubt that, in these stories as well as our lived experience, it’s important to watch what these systems are doing and the harm they inflict on us. If there is a downside, or even a risk, to Habitat’s focus, it is this: its voice is sometimes that of a clinician assessing an urgent injury. But there are a few opportunities for these characters to break through their circumstances, and it is no mistake that those moments, like the bunker story “The Salt Box” and the finisher “Spare Parts,” stand out from the rest. These stories cannot guide us out of the violence they describe, but they make crucial progress in clarifying the shape and the aim of its perpetrators.
brandon brown (they/them) holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts—what they call their “MFA in strange stories.” They are a 2025 recipient PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers, and their work is featured in Split Lip Magazine, BFS Journal, and forthcoming from khōréō magazine. Right now, they are working on a short story cycle about a small town in the grip of climate change and eroded reality. They grew up in upstate South Carolina and now live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Felix, their loudmouth cat. You can connect with them @cedarchromatic.