Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Book Title: Wanderers
Author: Chuck Wendig
Genre: Science Fiction, Apocalypse
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Source: ebook & audiobook

Goodreads, Amazon UK

Plot: Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.
For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them–and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart–or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Read this review by Julie Ann Rea, written for Three Crows Magazine. It's one of our best reviews, and Julie is a lot more eloquent than I am.

Wanderers is a huge book, and you'll see it compared to The Stand everywhere. They do have a lot in common, but Chuck Wendig's approach to a pandemic that'll wipe out humanity is, at least in the beginning, a lot gentler than King's.

This novel has the usual fanatics any fictional apocalypse needs, but it also has heart. A lot of heart. Strong relationships, loyalty, dedication, cooperation. And the science is incredibly well researched and fascinating. (Also a bit terrifying!)

What might put some people off liking Wanderers is how political it is. If you know Chuck Wendig and follow him on Twitter, none of it will come as a surprise, and he doesn't bury his message, doesn't attempt to veil it. It's right there on every page. 

While The Stand offers some biblical themes and, at least in places, a theistic worldview, Wanderers trusts science. Faith is a crutch, something to overcome.

The book is perhaps overly long in places, but if King can bring out an uncut version of The Stand, filled with random scenes and bits that could be (and originally were) cut, then I'm sure we can forgive Wanderers for being slow. Especially in the first half.

I enjoyed the characters and the writing so much that it never bothered me, and I gladly went along for the ride, even if the screaming, murdering, and dying didn't start until halfway through.

Oh and the president sits on her hands and does nothing...sound familiar?

Highly recommended to all fans of the apocalypse who don't shy away from a doorstopper.

Panik by Chris Selwyn James

Book Title: Panik

Author: Chris Selwyn James
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Apocalypse-ish
Source: Author

Amazon UK, Goodreads 

Plot Summary: The epidemic starts in Oxford. New, expensive drugs keep people awake for days, and strict controls are introduced to quarantine affected communities. Yet people are still dying in the night.
In this world, Nick peddles powerful sleep-deprivation drugs, while Rosa is locked up in a government "safe house" because they think she is the key to finding a cure.
Set in an isolated, pre-apocalyptic United Kingdom, PANIK tells a story about mass hysteria, profit-driven drug companies, and corrupt government. It explores how we are becoming less connected to each other, losing a core part of what it is to be human.

What did I think?

While this book ultimately wasn't my cup of tea, I did enjoy quite a few aspects:

The characters feel real, three-dimensional and are well developed. The pacing is on point; the story moves quickly and never feels slow.

Compassion, what does it mean to be human, and kindness are themes that I always enjoy reading about. Especially now that we see far too many negative headlines.

I must admit that I didn't quite click with the author's voice, and his tendency to switch from one character's point of view to another's just as their story filled with tension kept me from becoming fully immersed.

The plot itself is an interesting thought-experiment, but the ending left too many questions unanswered and didn't feel satisfying.

However, Chris Selwyn James took quite a few circumstances from our world and proceeded to explore an intriguing what if set in a pre-apocalyptic United Kingdom. From mass hysteria to profit-driven drug companies and corrupt governments, the author presents a chilling world, and it's a fitting read during this coronavirus lockdown.

By The Feet Of Men by Grant Price

Book Title: By The Feet of Men
Author: Grant Price
Genre: Science Fiction / Post-Apocalyptic
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Source: Paperback provided by the author

Amazon UK, Goodreads 

Plot Summary: The world's population has been decimated by the Change, a chain reaction of events triggered by global warming.
In Europe, governments have fallen, cities have crumbled and the wheels of production have ground to a halt.

The Alps region, containing most of the continent's remaining fresh water, has become a closed state with heavily fortified borders. Survivors cling on by trading through the Runners, truck drivers who deliver cargo and take a percentage.

Amid the ruins of central Germany, two Runners, Cassady and Ghazi, are called on to deliver medical supplies to a research base deep in the Italian desert, where scientists claim to be building a machine that could reverse the effects of the Change. Joining the pair is a ragtag collection of drivers, all of whom have something to prove.

Standing in their way are starving nomads, crumbling cities, hostile weather and a rogue state hell-bent on the convoy's destruction.

And there's another problem: Cassady is close to losing his nerve.

What did I think?

I love post-apocalyptic fiction and read this one in go. The prose is straightforward and simple, with no distractions. By The Feet of Men offers a lot of action, and the pacing doesn't let up. Not a dull moment in sight.

Grant Price takes a lot of care to build his characters. Instead of focusing on the world as so many post-apocalyptic novels do, he decided to focus on his characters, and it works.

While the world building is definitely immersive with no info dumps, the apocalypse has already happened, and this is how humanity lives now.  The world is a backdrop, an intriguing one, but a backdrop nonetheless, amidst a varied cast of three dimensional characters.

They're all well developed, well written, and I found myself fully invested in all of them. A ragtag group of people, thrown together in an attempt to do something they think will help the world. They form bonds, work with each other, protect each other and support each other.

Loyalty, friendship, but also working together for the greater good, even though one might not like each other all that much are themes Grant Price examines. Besides the aforementioned, there's the usual: is this shit worth dying for. And really, that last theme will always be interesting, and I'll always love reading about characters who decide they're willing to risk their lives for a cause they believe in.

I recommend this to all fans of post-apocalyptic fiction.

Manna City by Geoffrey Pierce

Title: Manna City

Author: Geoffrey Pierce
Genre: Science Fiction
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Source: Digital copy provided by the author 

Amazon UK, Goodreads 

Plot Summary: Nista is nine months pregnant, starving, and living in a cave. Her husband, Dane, thinks she's gone crazy. And the first time she heard the voice of her unborn child, she thought she'd gone crazy, too. But the child has told her too many things, shown her too many things that have come to pass. She knows…someone is coming to usher them away from their isolated purgatory. Someone is coming to lead them through the unforgiving desert - teeming with lawless killers and savage beasts - to the last bastion of civilization, a mythical land of plenty called Manna City.

I received a digital version from the author (thank you) in exchange for an honest review.

What did I think?

I almost never read the synopsis, even when authors ask me for a review I only briefly glance at it, because I like to enjoy a book knowing nothing about it. Occasionally, I'm very pleasantly surprised. Occasionally, it goes wrong.

I was pleased with this read.

We follow three characters: Nista, Dane, and Halvist. Nista is pregnant, married to Dane and together they're trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The day they meet Halvist things change...

Manna City itself is a mythical place. A place where things are good, and where water and food aren't scarce. But is it real?

I love post-apocalyptic novels. I enjoy the grim tone, the desperate characters, and the odds stacked against their success. Pierce does a good job at describing the world he created. His style is easy to read, and his visuals are vivid and clear. I read the book almost in one sitting; it's pretty short, but also pretty tense with good pacing.

The characters are well fleshed out, but I couldn't connect the three. In fact, I disliked all of them, and maybe that's realistic, because I doubt someone fighting to survive every single day against all odds is going to remain what we'd call a "nice person." Sadly, barely caring whether these people lived or died, made me feel somewhat detached from the book.

I recommend Manna City to people looking for a short post-apocalyptic read with a supernatural touch.

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

Book Title: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
Author: Meg Elison
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥
Source: ARC via Netgalley
Goodreads, Amazon UK

The publisher's description on Netgalley: When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power—and the strong who possess it. A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men’s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she’ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence. After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.

I got an ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Why did I request it? I thought the cover looks gorgeous. It won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2014 and the story sounded intriguing.

What did I think? It's definitely a gritty post-apocalyptic tale, filled with unsettling realism and quite a few triggering topics. Word of advice, if you can't cope with rape, don't pick this one up.

Imagine the flu kills 98% of humanity. Imagine it kills almost all women and we are now rare as... well, something that is very rare and everyone is basically willing to kill for it. Women become something men can own, trade, rape and possess. There's only a handful left and men are not happy about that. Pregnancy is a death sentence for the child, and usually for the mother as well.
The unnamed midwife keeps a diary so that others will remember and know what happened to the world. It's brutal. It's about survival. Birth control is essential.

There's a few things that made it hard for me to connect with the book.

I did not like any of the characters which made it difficult to care about the outcome. I especially disliked the midwife herself. It's a realistic character, flawed, with strengths and weaknesses. Well written actually. But I did not like her.

The diary entries are disjointed, written in choppy sentences and very casual English. I'm aware that I keep my diaries the same way, but I'm not aiming to ever publish them. For the sake of fiction, they could have been written better? But I seem to be in the minority, most reviews I've read so far aren't bothered by that aspect.

We also learn the fate of several characters that did not keep a diary. The author clearly thought the reader should know what happens to those characters, even though the book starts with a bunch of boys transcribing the diaries of the midwife and there's no way they'd ever learn what happened to the others. So why should the reader?

However, I guess now I'm nitpicking.

If you like post-apocalyptic stories and don't shy away from realistic stories that have no sugarcoating whatsoever, please go ahead, you will like this one.

On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis

Book Title: On the Edge of Gone
Author: Corinne Duyvis
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Goodreads, Amazon UK

Goodreads Summary: January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter near their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time.
Then a last-minute encounter leads them to something better than a temporary shelter: a generation ship that’s scheduled to leave Earth behind and colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But each passenger must have a practical skill to contribute. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister? When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

What did I think? There's many good things to say about this book and I gave it a high rating, so let me start with the one thing that bothered me. Just so I don't send anyone off with the wrong expectations.

Nothing much happens in this book. Don't expect space, or much of the apocalypse, or much of the aftermath of an apocalypse. Yes, a comet is about to hit the Earth and Denise, the protagonist, and her mother find themselves on board of a generation ship which has not yet taken off. The book tells the story of a girl desperately trying to make herself useful to convince the captain to let her family stay on board.

Not much else happens.

Don't expect action.

Instead expect a character study. Expect a story about well written characters, their relationships and the important question who gets to survive and why.

It's exceptionally well written. The main character is an autistic, mixed race, Dutch girl and the author writes her well. Corinne Duyvis' narrative in general is very engaging and her voice feels real throughout.

It's sad that we live in a world where a book with a diverse portrayal of gay, trans and mixed race characters deserves extra stars just because of said portrayal. It's also sad that said portrayal needs pointing out and isn't just the standard by now. It's 2016, come on! But it does need pointing out and this book is fantastic when it comes to being inclusive.

I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a slow paced plot where the people matter and not the plot itself.

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven

Book Title: Lucifer's Hammer
Author: Larry Niven
Genres: Science Fiction
My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Goodreads, Amazon UK

Goodreads Summary: The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival--a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known.

What did I think? I loved it. But! Lucifer's Hammer is a reluctant four stars, so don't run out and buy the book just based on that rating. It's without any doubt a very engaging read and once things get going I thought it was a captivating, dark, gritty and realistic read.

A list of things that make this a reluctant four stars:
- Written in 1977, there's racial stereotypes and gender stereotypes that might rub some people the wrong way.
- The first half of the book is exposition and we meet an endless cast of characters and maybe it wasn't necessary to include that many people?
- The portrayal of career driven women, hahaha, okay, 1977, fair enough, but still.
- The portrayal of black people, again uhm, okay 1977, then again, come on.
- The portrayal of Russians, okay, this one is fully allowed, the Cold War was still going in 1977.
- The comet doesn't actually collide with our planet until far far far into the book.

But:
- Humanity goes and becomes nothing but cow-dung once the comet hits. We're talking low. Murder is just the beginning. I don't want to spoil just how low it all goes, but I thought it was interesting. I watch the news these days and look at the current refugee crisis and you know what? I fully believe humanity would sink this low if society fell apart and we neither had food, electricity nor anything else you need to survive an apocalypse.

I thoroughly enjoyed just how far Niven took it and maybe there's too many stereotypes and maybe he's too much of a white male in the way he approached this book, but that didn't stop me from reading this in almost one sitting.

If you like exposition and a big cast of characters and a lot of buildup and would like to read about a comet hitting our planet? This one is for you.

Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Book Title: Life as We Knew It
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genres: Science Fiction (YA)
My Rating: ♥
Goodreads, Amazon UK

Goodreads Summary: I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald’s still would be open. High school sophomore Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.Told in a year’s worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

What did I think?

I finally signed up to the local library and found out that Overdrive doesn't work with Kindle in the UK. Now, I'm sad. But I have the iPhone 6s Plus, so my screen is just big enough to accommodate book pages. Unfortunately their eBook selection isn't that big. While browsing through the catalog, I stumbled over this book by chance and it sounded interesting. I love dystopias, I love the apocalypse and the idea of the moon causing havoc on earth was an interesting one.

Life as We Knew it only gets a single, lonely star though. Maybe a second one because it is an easy read and sort of entertaining. It's told in the first person from the POV of a teenage girl.

What's wrong with it, you ask? The plot... the science?! Come on. Some research, a teeny tiny bit of research at the very least? Open up Wikipedia at least once? Maybe google moon phases?

The book starts with all astronomers being super psyched about this asteroid hitting our moon. Not one thought it might go wrong. Of course not, because they know science and they're aware our moon can't be knocked out of its orbit by a small rock. Only it is...

Then a bunch of stuff happens. Tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes and suddenly the flu. It's like the author was wondering what else could go possibly go wrong on earth? I know: MALARIA.

Uhm, what?

Of course it didn't help that the sixteen year old teenager named Miranda... I wanted to strangle her. I mean, maybe that's how teenagers are, fair enough, but my reaction to her basically told me if I'm ever found in such a situation with a teenager, I would possibly want the end to come much faster just so I can get away from said teenager.

This book is definitely better off in the hands of a younger YA audience.

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

Book Title: The Last One
Author: Alexandra Oliva
Genres: Science Fiction
My Rating: ♥ ♥
Goodreads, Amazon UK

Goodreads Summary: Survival is the name of the game as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself in Alexandra Oliva’s fast-paced novel of suspense.
She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.
Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes.

What did I think? No. Nope. No. Mostly. I have such beef with dense main characters and Zoo is exactly that. She manages to stumble through a good part of the plot thinking every dead person she sees is in fact a puppet, a prop so to speak. Even when she meets a boy who tells her about the destruction that's happened in the world she believes he's part of the show. I get it. She's in denial. But come on...

This is Oliva's debut novel and as a debut it's not bad, I must admit. Her writing is promising, the premise is interesting and if I could have connected with the characters I might have even liked it. But it's hard to connect with someone when all you want to do is shake them and yell at them to open their eyes and face reality. Besides Zoo there's the other contestants, each has been given a name that fits either their profession or some defining character trait and while that is exactly the point of reality television it also makes it harder for the reader to emphasize with the characters and connect with them.

Personally I hate reality TV, I'm sure that didn't help.

Despite the fact I neither liked the plot nor the main character very much I finished the book. It's a gripping and fast read with a tight plot, so if the premise sounds interesting to you, don't hesitate to pick it up.