What Extremity by Nicholas Binge Gets Right About Madness
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There are books that ask questions, quietly, insistently, moments that percolate in your mind over and over, getting more expansive as you read.
But then there are books that just don’t ask. They demand answers just as strongly.
Extremity by Nicholas Binge is firmly in the latter.
Marketed as a time-traveling, end of the world police procedural, Extremity blurs the lines between science fiction and psychological thriller (with a splash of eeriness). It is a story about obsession, identity, and the unbearable weight of knowing too much. Every page hums with tension. It’s the kind that feels both intellectual and emotional (more like cold logic pressed against raw, human fear.)
✦ TL;DR — Read It If You Like ✦
- 🎙 Interview-style storytelling (*Daisy Jones & The Six* energy, but darker)
- 🌀 Time-travel conspiracies and psychological sci-fi thrillers
- 💀 Tordotcom-style fiction laced with cosmic horror and investigative grit
- 🕯 Characters haunted by legendary careers and brutal acts
- 💫 Stories that frustrate you—but refuse to let you go
Title: Extremity
Author: Nicholas Binge
Publisher: Tordotcom
Format: ARC
Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery, Novella, Thriller, Horror, Time Travel
Release Date: September 16, 2025
Pages: 176
Star Rating: 4 stars
Spice Rating: 0 chili peppers
The Premise That Hooked Me
When renowned police detective Julia Torgrimsen is pulled out of forced retirement to investigate the murder of Bruno Donaldson, a billionaire she once knew from undercover work, she expects a single corpse.
Shocker! 😬😱😮 Instead she finds two, each an identical Bruno, down to the fingerprints.
That impossible discovery, sets the tone for everything that follows. Partnered with DC Mark Cochrane and DCI John Grossman, Julia is drawn into a world of secrets. Where the impossible happens. Documents that shouldn’t exist, future stock market crashes, and a clandestine time-travel conspiracy that threatens not just Julia’s sanity but the whole of the human race.
Characters on the Edge
Julia Torgrimsen is the anchor ⚓of the chaos. She was once a legendary detective, now a recluse haunted by the brutal act that ended her infamous career. She’s a paradox, tough yet brittle in all the right ways. Not to mention she’s sharp, exhausted, and quietly unravelling.
John Grossman represents weary authority, holding the crumbling edges of order together. While Mark Cochrane is naive (almost inconceivably so) chaos in motion. He’s a young, impulsive, frustrating (FRUSTRATING😫) human. I lost count of how many times I muttered, 💢”you’re all a bunch of idiots,”💢 and yet I couldn’t stop reading (it’s a novella there really wouldn’t be a point).
And then there’s Norman Horner, the slick, insufferable (I don’t think I can explain how insufferable) lawyer whose presence makes your skin crawl. He gave me the pure ICK 🤮. He’s written with such precision, in such a short page count that I loathed him, and admired Binge for it. I’ll be the first to admit: It takes talent to get the full scope of a character in 176 pages, while wanting to hurl the book across the room EVERY TIME he was on page.
What Extremity Gets Right About Madness
The madness here isn’t theatrical. It’s methodical. The kind that disguises itself as order, unfolding in careful, terrifying logic.
It’s the looseness of time travel wrapped in bureaucracy, grief disguised as duty, files whispering of futures no one should be able to know, and a reality quietly fraying at the edges.
Binge has a way of writing that insanity within the pages with restraint. His world feels rational (it all is very rational) until it doesn’t, logical until the moment logic collapses. Through the eyes of Julia, we witness how reason disintegrates when faced with the impossible.
By weaving cosmic horror, science fiction, and crime drama together, he builds a narrative that feels intimate and existential all at once. It’s less about monsters and more about the madness of trying to make sense of them.
The Reading Experience
Extremity is told entirely in interview style (think Daisy Jones and the Six), and reads like a confession pieced together after the end of the world.
Every perspective has a way of contradicting the other without being obvious. Pulling you deeper into uncertainty.
The pacing is tight, the atmosphere dense but with an air of unease. As it is a novella (perfect for Novella November), I finished it in one sitting. Being equal parts enthralled and exasperated. It’s not a book that wants to be loved (although you will thoroughly enjoy it). It wants to be understood. Experienced.
My favorite part (aside from the beginning) is the ending! It was brutal and just ambiguous enough that the questions that you thought were dispelled are ramped up in your mind. I closed the book unsure of whether or not I admired it or resented it, (but I knew I’d remember it 🤩).
Thank you so much to Tordotcom for sending me an ARC of Extremity to read and review. As I mentioned Extremity is perfect for Novella November (if you want other recs check this out).
Pick up a copy from Amazon or support your local indie bookstore and shop Bookshop.org.
If Extremity were on your TBR, would it stay or go? Let’s talk in the comments! I love knowing where you draw the line between “what the hell did I just read?” and “I need more of that STAT!”
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