Set in Alberta, The Beast sinks its fangs into one of the toughest questions of our time: Would you rather starve next week when the economy crashes, or in 50 years when the ecosystem collapses? Environmentalists and energy companies engulf each other in a firestorm of dramatic imagery and emotionally manipulative rhetoric in this tale of existential uncertainty. Join art school graduates Callum and Mary as they drift through bars, strip clubs and vegan wing joints not so much struggling to answer life’s difficult questions as doing their best to avoid having to ask those questions in the first place.

From environmentalists to oil sands workers, this book has something for everyone to chew on. Full of difficult questions and imperfect answers, ‘The Beast’ offers the kind of uncomfortable chuckle that comes from the creeping tendrils of existential dread tickling our sense of uncertainty. Join Callum and Mary as they drift through bars, strip clubs and vegan wing joints not so much struggling to answer life’s difficult questions as doing their best to avoid having to ask those questions in the first place. Peppered throughout the narrative is a dismantling of the glib cliches that make up our current, intractable discussion of energy policy.