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A review by wolfblade
The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker
3.0
I can't decide if I liked this book or not. I'm still thinking about the book, which I suppose is a good thing. However the book has left me feeling a little unsatisfied.
Edgar is kind of an arsehole. He has disengaged from everything, and so the beginning of the book is a bit disjointed as we only see what Edgar cares to notice - which isn't a lot. From a reader's point of view this was a little confusing at times, but I felt it was really well done.
He doesn't give a shit about the potential meteor strike, and hasn't bothered to prepare. He's the world's least hands on father and husband. He's lazy and he complains and he doesn't really like anyone. He was kind of a stand in for the reader, and I thought this was clever.
Almost everyone in this book is selfish, and it's shockingly confronting. At one point two men are trying to barricade themselves in their family run store, and Edgar kicks in the door to get some water and supplies. The store is then picked clean by looters, which means the family in the store have nothing on which to survive. That was also well done I thought.
However the characters were quite thin. I only really liked Harvey and Grimes. However Grimes, one of the main female characters, was fairly cardboard and perhaps only there to create romantic tension. Another character, Richard, was so thin that I actually kept forgetting who he was. Jacob was a bit of an arsehole. Edgar was the only one who really had a character arc - by the end he was a much better person. He was weak and selfish, but as I said before, he represented the reader - to show how unprepared we'd be in the same situation.
The ending is where this all fell apart for me. There was basically no conclusion. A lot of the characters died, which I know is realistic but which I think is a lazy way of dealing with a character. Other characters just disappeared, another convenient and lazy way of dealing with them. And I felt like nothing was achieved by the end - if Edgar had decided to stay put in Edinburgh the story would have had the same conclusion, though less character growth I suppose.
Overall I liked this story for the character growth, the setting, and the apocalypse, but I didn't like the ending, which made me feel like I wasted time reading the book. Well, that's a bit strong. I feel like I could have not read the book and still feel just as satisfied. It started off really strongly, with some good writing, but I think Adrian Walker rushed the ending and didn't take time to wrap up the characters properly.
Edgar is kind of an arsehole. He has disengaged from everything, and so the beginning of the book is a bit disjointed as we only see what Edgar cares to notice - which isn't a lot. From a reader's point of view this was a little confusing at times, but I felt it was really well done.
He doesn't give a shit about the potential meteor strike, and hasn't bothered to prepare. He's the world's least hands on father and husband. He's lazy and he complains and he doesn't really like anyone. He was kind of a stand in for the reader, and I thought this was clever.
Almost everyone in this book is selfish, and it's shockingly confronting. At one point two men are trying to barricade themselves in their family run store, and Edgar kicks in the door to get some water and supplies. The store is then picked clean by looters, which means the family in the store have nothing on which to survive. That was also well done I thought.
However the characters were quite thin. I only really liked Harvey and Grimes. However Grimes, one of the main female characters, was fairly cardboard and perhaps only there to create romantic tension. Another character, Richard, was so thin that I actually kept forgetting who he was. Jacob was a bit of an arsehole. Edgar was the only one who really had a character arc - by the end he was a much better person. He was weak and selfish, but as I said before, he represented the reader - to show how unprepared we'd be in the same situation.
The ending is where this all fell apart for me. There was basically no conclusion. A lot of the characters died, which I know is realistic but which I think is a lazy way of dealing with a character. Other characters just disappeared, another convenient and lazy way of dealing with them. And I felt like nothing was achieved by the end - if Edgar had decided to stay put in Edinburgh the story would have had the same conclusion, though less character growth I suppose.
Overall I liked this story for the character growth, the setting, and the apocalypse, but I didn't like the ending, which made me feel like I wasted time reading the book. Well, that's a bit strong. I feel like I could have not read the book and still feel just as satisfied. It started off really strongly, with some good writing, but I think Adrian Walker rushed the ending and didn't take time to wrap up the characters properly.