A Different Take On The End Of The World

My husband and I sometimes will stream some nonsense TV show in the 30-45 minutes before we go to bed. We don’t really watch it per se, it’s just kind of on in the background. Alaska State Troopers is a show we do that a lot with, and so is Doomsday Preppers. The latter is more interesting than you might think…the kinds of people who are preppers aren’t always the kinds of people you would imagine would be into that sort of thing. Sure, there are plenty of rural, religious types, but there’s also families who live in McMansions in the suburbs, young single urbanites…a surprisingly diverse cross-section of our population.

But what if they were right? What if the end of the world was nigh? Corinne Duyvis’ On the Edge of Gone takes place in the Netherlands about 20 years in the future, and at the beginning of the novel, we join teenager Denise and her mom as they (and the rest of the world) are getting ready for a comet to strike the planet. The very wealthy have left Earth via spaceship, and so have some of the very lucky, who won lotteries for spots on those ships. The remaining population have been assigned to shelters to ride out the strike and immediate aftermath. Denise, her sister Iris, and her mother are in the latter group, but when the appointed day comes and Iris is nowhere to be found, Denise and her mother find themselves running late to get to their shelter in time. On their way, they come across one of Denise’s former teachers and her partner who have had an accident, and are permitted to take shelter aboard the spaceship they’ve been assigned to in return for helping them get there…

Full review at 500 Books