Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) – I fear this review will make this book seem much more convoluted than it really is, but I’m going to try and give it the credit it’s due. The premise is a simple one: there’s been a worldwide pandemic where most of humanity is dead and the few survivors in the twenty years that follow fight brigands, cultists, and a world slowly devolving into barbarism. Technology is gone, borders no longer exist, medicine is a memory. […]
Questing with snakes
This one was recommended by fellow Cannonballers/Pajibans when I requested help finding women sci-fi writers, and I am so glad! It was post-apocalyptic and interesting and original. I had read some McIntyre before, but not this one. Snake is a healer, traveling around and helping people in villages that are too small to have their own resident healer. She works with three snakes, using their poison to combat cancers or other diseases, and using the ultra-rare dreamsnake to ease pain until the end in the […]
“They bred dogs for everything else…why didnt they breed them to live longer?”
Yet another post-apocalyptic novel set in the not too distant future. I know. It’s like every fifth book written these days is set during the end of humanity. I suppose that says something about the fatalism of America in a post 9/11, post-truth world. But this isn’t the Walking Dead. There isn’t a zombie in sight, in fact. The Dog Stars is more The Thin Red Line meets The Road. It’s a somber reflection of the end of the world, at times haunting and told in a lyrical […]
An Exercise in How Not to Write Post-Apocalyptic Gender Segregated Societies
This book is festival of horrors. If I could give it negative five stars I would. If for some terrible reason you want to read it don’t read this there will be spoilers. It’s a YA novel and as such there is a certain amount of teenage angst that has to be begrudgingly accepted. I understand that there is a formula to YA novels I have read quite a few myself, but I had just read two pretty lengthy nonfiction books, 100 pages of microbiology, […]