“The Hospital at the End of the World,” by Justin C. Key, Harper, 400 pages.
Book critics rarely, if ever, write about book covers. That task, perhaps, is the domain of designers, artists and publicists. It’s what’s between the covers that matters. But the cover might be the best place to start when reviewing Justin C. Key’s debut novel, “The Hospital at the End of the World,” an Afrofuturist medical thriller set in a dystopian New Orleans.
On the cover, drones hover menacingly over a mist-shrouded hospital complex that, in turn, rises menacingly above the tree-lined avenue of a nondescript downtown district. It’s a slick bit of photographic collage work that, with a few minutes of online sleuthing, easily reveals its source materials…