Length: 464 pages
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Edgar Hill is an over-weight, lazy, and borderline alcoholic, who was a lacking husband to his wife, Beth, and just-about-there-father to his children, Alice and Arthur. Until the event that brings about the end of the world. When his wife and children end up at the other end of the country, Edgar knows that he needs to do whatever he can to get to them. There are no roads left and barely any vehicles, and the miles that stretch between him and his family are little more than a barren, dangerous wasteland. Edgar has only a few days to cross the barren and desolate remains of what had once been thriving cities. With no other option, he does the one thing he’s always hated – he starts running. Every second counts as Edgar pushes himself to put one foot in front of the other, every waking minute of every day. But is willpower enough? Will Edgar reach his family in time? Or will the lifestyle he’s always lived force him to fail and lose his wife and children forever?
The bottom line:
The End of the World Running Club is a highly typical post-apocalyptic novel that uses a unique angle, but fails in implementation due to poor characterization, a weak story-line, and lack of ingenuity other than in its basic premise.
My review:
Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a copy of this book!
The End of the World Running Club starts off really well. It’s really creepy, borderline horror, and hard hitting on emotion. Some parts of the entire story remain positive throughout. This includes a few characters who are likable and who remain as consistent as humanly possible. It is also descriptive enough to achieve a sense of intrigue, has a strong creepiness factor, and a very unique angle (running across the country to be with your family). Additionally, it reads fast enough and holds its suspense. The best part about the book, though, is the way it describes the act of running and the many emotional, physical, and mental aspects of it. These make for the more interesting parts of the story.
But the positive aspects aren’t really enough to make you ignore the many problems in the book. The main one would be Edgar Hill himself. Although the book is meant to be a journey of realization for him, his entire personality is downright annoying. He fluctuates between determined, whiny, and pathetic, and is too inconsistent to make any real impression. Furthermore, his relationship with his family is meant to be with its share of problems, yet strong. But it comes across as barely-existent, and that weakens the entire foundation of the story itself. As a result, you end up not really bothered about whether he actually achieves his goal or not.
Most of the other characters are annoying too. There is no consistency in the personalities of a majority of the characters, nor in the relationships they share with one another. And that makes their entire journey very tiresome to witness. It seems like Walker only made the characters say and do what he needed for the story to proceed a particular way. Often, that went against the personalities depicted until that point, and made them too random to associate with or even follow. While it did help the story proceed, it also led to it making less and less sense.
Another thing that doesn’t work for the book was its very commonplace elements. It has everything you expect from a post-apocalyptic thriller. It has the random murders, looting, gangs, and everything that you’ve seen before. While the running club aspect was innovative, that inventiveness doesn’t really extend into the other arcs of the book. So, you end up feeling like you’re reading something that you’ve either read or watched before (I found a strong resemblance between a few scenes from the book and scenes from the movie, The Book of Eli).
All in all, The End of the World Running Club has potential, but does not see it through. This book wouldn’t be very high on my list of recommendations for others. But, if I had to recommend it, it would be to:
- die hard fans of post-apocalyptic novels
- people who don’t really mind a loosely woven story
Let us know what you thought of this review and/or The End of the World Running Club in the comments below!
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