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robarnold's review against another edition
4.0
lauren3101's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
moomin333's review against another edition
4.0
geckoedit's review against another edition
4.0
It's hard being a human. Most of the time we're just blind idiots seeking joy in a world full of fear and pain. We have no idea what we're doing and on the rare occasions when we get things right, we're just lucky. Our lives are filled with the humdrum, dust and noise with no meaning. And yet they contain moments that seem to mean something, something we can't describe but want to. Those moments leave holes that we want to fill.
Ed Hill is a flabby, reluctant father with a boring life, until hundreds of asteroids wipe out western civilisation as we know it. Separated from his family, he has to race across the UK to find them before they disappear forever. If he makes it that far, that is...
You don't run thirty miles, you run a single step many times over. That's all running is; that's all anything is. If there's somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that's all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don't have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you've come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what's in front of you and how you're going to move it behind you.
My first impression was pretty positive: I like Ed. I like his snark, his bitterness, his self-deprecating humour. I like Bryce more. I like that the story is set in Edinburgh rather than North America, and I like that Ed is a completely average person. Reading this book might have made me work out just a little bit harder than usual, in solidarity. It's an apocalypse story without all the silliness that usually makes them require a large helping of suspension of disbelief: aliens didn't throw rocks at the Earth, the dead stay dead, and there's nothing too woo-woo that can't be explained by science (and dehydration). It's a straight-forward tale told in down-to-earth words.
My eyes were drawn to the water lapping around the edges of the city, out of place and unsure of itself against its new shore. I saw tiny white specks, gulls moving around on the waves and flapping clumsily up onto high window ledges, the urban cliffs in which they were now making nests. An erosion was beginning, which, I imagined, would result in a beach after enough time. The sand would be made of bones, credit cards, fridges, cars and sofa springs. Dunes would form and grow tufts of grass. The sun might eventually shine on them, a young boy might tumble down them, laughing, rolling in the trillion, trillion fragments of debris and detritus, dust ground from the lives who had once walked the bed of the rolling ocean into which he crashed. The living would run through the dust of the dead, just as they always had done.
While there are some stunning descriptive passages like the one above, and some powerful musings on the meaning of life, family and how Ed's mentality changes as he becomes better at running, I felt disconnected from it, in some ways. Sometimes I was fully absorbed, but sometimes the pace would slow to a bit too much of a halt or my mind would start to wander a little. I didn't find the other characters particularly interesting and Ed's detachment from them meant that I struggled to connect with (and care) about them. I feel like this would make an excellent movie, and perhaps the movie might be better than the book. I did find the book thought-provoking and inspiring. However, I feel like it lost its way towards the end, with a strange, rambling hallucinatory sequence that didn't make much impact and a very unsatisfying ending.
That other beast inside you, the one you rarely see? You have it tethered tight. It watches and waits while you mess up your life, fill your body with poison and muddy your mind with worry. For some it takes just one call to free it. For others it takes 500 miles of agony.
For those who like survival stories with gore, the raw humanity of society without rules or order, and especially those who like to run, this is a great book. It is exciting and entertaining, most of the time. For me, I guess I wanted something a little more; it's different from a lot of books in the genre and I liked its originality. Character- and plot-wise it wasn't quite perfect, but I still enjoyed it.
kelbi's review against another edition
4.0
canadajanes's review against another edition
4.0
kleinkid7's review against another edition
4.0
Merged review:
3.5 but I'll round it up. I liked it well enough but it was quite a bit longer than it should have been.
reader_01's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
whitmc's review against another edition
4.0
I will be recommending this, it's apocalyptic. As in, the apocalypse happens in the book, you get walked through it, and then you see what happens with the survivors. It made me want to build a deep and stocked cellar under my house and have some firearms on hand for the inevitable Rabbits.
Absolutely a great book club book because I'm dying to discuss it, especially the end!
nerdyrev's review against another edition
3.0
A giant meteor shower hits the UK and destroys most of it. There are a few survivors clustered together searching for others. Edgar is the father in one of those families. He had a shelter and his family survived the onslaught.
It is months later and Ed finds himself with a small group of survivors who now must be trained as military to survive. While out on a scout mission, a rescue group comes and takes Ed's family and other survivors halfway across the country. With his small group, Ed must traverse the landscape to get back to his family. He will run into danger, people that help, and more danger. Will he make it back? To get there in time, he and his group must run 20 miles a day, hence the name- The End of the World Running Club.
I am going to start off with my criticism to just get it out of the way. While I enjoyed the book, I felt this wasn't a huge addition to the apocalypse genre. There were characters that could have been in other books, i.e. the cooky guy who lost his mind a bit and still tries to maintain his home, the apocalypse journey was somewhat typical, and I wasn't a huge fan of the main character.
With that stated, I still have to write that I did enjoy the book. While there were certainly some slower parts, all the other ones moved fairly quickly. Ed was going from one place to another at a good clip. The problem was the slower parts were really slow, which took away a bit from the pacing. The characters were well developed and the story was a good one. I can see why a lot of people enjoyed it.
I thought it was a bit on the slower side. As stated, I did enjoy it, but would have a difficult time recommending it to others as the next great apocalypse book. I think it is a genre that is not only plentiful right now, but has some pretty tough books to best, such as The Road. It is too much of a popular genre right now that I wonder if this book might struggle a bit as it hits the main publishing house. It comes out in September, so we will see.
I gave it 3.5 stars.
*I want to thank NetGalley for the early release. I received it in exchange for an honest book review.*