It’s the end of the world as we know it….

In Toronto, Ontario paramedic-in-training Jeevan Chaudhary is sitting in the audience watching a production of King Lear when the lead suddenly drops dead onstage. Unable to save him, Chaudhary comforts a young actress as the body is taken away. This is Year Zero.
In Year Twenty, Kirsten Raymonde is a member of the Travelling Symphony – a group of actors and musicians who travel around the Great Lakes performing classical music and Shakespeare. The colonies they visit sprung up after the Georgia Flu wiped out the majority of the world’s population. There is no power, no mass communications, no government, no medicine; those things have not existed in almost two decades. The roads are overgrown, but the Symphony travels along a regular and relatively safe route. Arriving at their next destination, however, something has changed: people hide out or watch from a distance, and a strange man known only as The Prophet is now in charge. Two former Symphony members who had settled at this colony during the last tour are also now missing. Sensing danger, the group leaves quickly but The Prophet and his devotees are not far behind. As the groups make their way toward the large colony at Severn City Airport, the story unfolds in both the past and the present to eventually collide in a page-turning climax.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel tells the story of the end of modern civilization and the new world that rose from its ashes. This is a well-written post-apocalyptic story, and Mandel effectively weaves between the “then” and “now” to set the stage for the final confrontation. The ending provides some sense of closure, in that the main storyline wraps up; however enough is left open to allow for a possible series to be written. The characters were interesting and the world they inhabited could tell many more tales. This reader, while satisfied with the ending, was left wanting to know more about the new world and is hopeful for at least a sequel.