A review by mspilesofpaper
How We End by L.M. Juniper

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

How We End takes the zombie apocalypse but instead of showing how to beat it by using a white straight man, the author took the question "How do we survive it without losing our humanity?" and created a small and diverse group as their main characters. The story is told from a dual perspective (Jake and Liv) and starts at very mundane points - being in the tube to meet friends in Central London, and being in a bar - and follows the group on their way out of Greater London towards a point where they thought it would lead to safety. It's a very character-driven story and is very stressful to read, especially the first 40% or so when no one knows exactly what is going on. If you like The Last of Us (either as the series or as one of the games), you should give it a try because it's difficult not to notice the inspiration.

Unlike the average zombie book (or movie), the zombies here are very diverse and not all act as "stupid, brain-rotten and driven by hunger" monsters who shuffle slowly along streets to get to their next meal. Instead, you have a wild variety of zombies who are often very fast and some are surprisingly intelligent. In addition, I think the book handled the governmental and civilian response very well. Normally, society falls instantly and everyone knows exactly what happened when the truth is that the governments would try to hide what is happening, you would have conspiracy theories running wild (just remember all the nonsense that was spruced during COVID-19) and people not believing it, people who would take advantage of the situation, ... - you get all of these points in How We End. Further, the novel includes issues such as "How do you defend yourself if you don't have access to guns?" (since the book is set in England and we have stricter gun laws than the US, so, of course, having a gun for defence would be far-fetched), how do you deal with the need for prescribed medication (for health reasons but also for an addiction), and how do you get new clothes and food because there won't be any shops open where you can buy anything. 

My only criticism would be the fast development of the zombies and the virus behind it. It took the zombies in The Last of Us game quite long to have so many different kinds but it's rather instanteneous in the novel. Where in the game, we are talking about several years, the timeline for the book is just a few weeks as the group leaves London in September/October and finds out about the mutations in October/November. While the author has a scene where it's hinted at the fact that the virus is out for longer than anyone thought, it still feels off. I think it would have been better to include a few more scenes to establish an actual timeline, so the reader would learn how long the virus LYM-1 was exposed to the public, about the first cases (they have to be outside of London since the mutations start to appear in the countryside) and then have London with the extreme amount of cases out of seemingly nowhere. 

TL;DR: If you like video games like The Last of Us, Resident Evil or movies/TV series like World War Z or The Walking Dead, you should give it a try. If you are new to the zombie genre but like stories with BIPOC and queer representation in them: give it a try! Either way, it is a smaller take on the zombie apocalypse where people try to survive instead of beating the zombies. Wonderful use of the 'found family' trope as well!