A Quill & Quire Notable Book of 2025

“A stampeding, mesmeric novel, The Damagers is the work of a mind set on fire. Rob Benvie crafts prose like starlight—saturated, precise, and furious—pinpricks that cut through the dark sweep of power and craving. In this singular novel of men who seek to own souls, Benvie offers a handheld mirror to now: to the threat of tyranny, the urgency of knowledge, and the total, lifesaving miracle of sistership.” —Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“Ambitious and incantatory. . . . A salvo across the bow of a crisis-ridden age, a barbaric yawp over the roofs of the contemporary world. . . . Rueful and ruminative . . . The Damagers presents a case for hope against hope, for a faith invested not so much in any one thing but rather in our capacity to live—fully live—in the face of an inevitable, undesigned, and unknowable future.” —Literary Review of Canada

“Rob Benvie’s The Damagers is so much more than a quaint historical imagining of an obscure cult’s rise to power and disappearance into obscurity—it is a spirituous rumination about demagogues, the call of the wild, and the fracturing of community-centred political organizing. It’s the best Canadian novel I have read this year.” —Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Quill & Quire

“The Damagers is a gripping and propulsive novel, filled with absorbing philosophical interludes, psychedelic drug trips and stark moments of violence. Benvie’s prose is muscular and heady, reflecting the grandiose visions of his characters, for whom romantic idealism is perhaps the only antidote to the alienation of a rapidly industrializing society.” —Toronto Star

“Utterly electrifying. . . . Benvie’s astute eye for power, progress, and human fallibility serves as the most dynamic of lenses, drawing out to sweeping, spectacular panoramas before pushing in to intensely gripping moments of conflict, loss—and triumph. Awesome in atmosphere and deeply heartfelt, The Damagers is an enduring reminder of the ever-present threat of despotism in a hostile, quickly changing world. The rich teachings in this novel will stay with me for a long time, namely that utopia and dystopia are one and the same, and they’ve always existed in the present.” —Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves