If, on your death bed, a stranger offered you the chance to extend your life, would you? Especially after you were resigned to death to the point your death would be medically assisted? That’s the question Nick Cutter posits at the start of The Dorians, publishing in May 2026 from Saga Press.
On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalizing offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause—forever, perhaps. The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent…one with no conscience, yet possessed with a single-minded purpose that has helped it persist for eons: the will to survive. The dark heart of unbridled human ambition finds its apex in an unholy experiment that now tests the limits of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity….
Cutter’s story centers on a group of five terminally ill senior citizens, all of whom have taken advantage of Canada’s allowance of medically assisted self-termination program. He spends most of the time on Frank, but allows enough room for Teddy, Claire, Maddy, and Hugo to have their own distinct identities and quirks. They are taken to a remote island a significant distance from mainland Canada whereupon they meet Doctor Astrid Marsh, the 19-year-old prodigy who has pioneered the life-extending and in fact, age-reversing medical procedure. Even after she explains the basis for this procedure is injecting a symbiotic creature (a genetically altered Jellyfish with some other animalist DNA) these five people agree. Nothing can go wrong when you voluntarily agree to something that defies all known science while having a symbiote (maybe a parasite?) into your body, right.
Well, at first, the science seems to be proving out. The “subjects” are seeing the results, they are aging backwards, with years and decades shedding the wrinkles, disease, and pain for strength and great health. Maybe not mental health because it isn’t easy sharing your body with another creature that wants to survive and thrive.
Of course, that’s why we have this novel that Nick Cutter so intelligently and horrifically released into the wild. These once elderly folks call themselves Dorians, after the Picture of Dorian Gray for the miraculous effects of this symbiote science.
Where to begin… I liked Frank a great deal. Readers (at least this particular reader) tends to empathize with the character to whom we are first introduced and Frank was our guy… our entry into this story. We see the other characters, at least initially through his eyes. It also helps that he seems the most grounded and manages to hold his sanity the most throughout the growing horrors that evolve.
He sets up an intriguing dichotomy between Doctor Marsh and her “subjects” as she refers to the Dorians. The very large delta in their ages makes for some fun dialogue early on when, for example, the acerbic (to put it mildly) Teddy first meets her and their conversations continue. Marsh is a driven young woman who has an uncompromising vision of what she wants to accomplish. As the symbiotes… or Hydras as Marsh calls them… become more potent within their human hosts, Marsh continues to stick to her focus, ignoring the obvious red flags. In other words, Cutter has crafted a very interesting “Mad Doctor” who is pulling the strings.
Science Fiction and Horror are rife with such stories of Science taking a turn for the horrific be it the Jurrasic Park, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, The Thing, or the one that essentially started it all for the intertwining of Horror and Science Fiction – Frankenstein. Cutter doesn’t shy away from any of these influences, he (and his characters) are fully aware of these things and the novel is better for it.
While I was glued to the page, upon reflection. I didn’t quite get a true motivation for why Astrid was driven for this specific scientific advancement.
Cutter is a writer I’ve had a very hit or miss relationship with over the years. I thoroughly enjoyed The Troop and The Handyman Method (with Andy F. Sullivan) but The Queen and Little Heaven didn’t quite work for me. I’m very happy to say that on the whole, The Dorians is much more in the camp that worked for me. It was fun, creepy, had some intriguing characters, and I just couldn’t put the damn thing down.
The way Cutter closed out The Dorians feels very much like the story could continue. Cutter, I think, typically hasn’t written any sequels, but maybe… just maybe he’ll extend the life of the story introduced in The Dorians for another books.
Bottom line, I have to give this one a solid recommendation.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | Gallery Books
May 2026 | 400 Pages
https://nickcutter.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
