In THE END OF THE WORLD RUNNING CLUB by Adrian Walker, meteors pound the earth, devastating the UK and leaving the entire country cratered. Edgar scrambles to get his wife Beth and two small children into the basement with some food and water while the sirens are wailing. After rescue, they end up an undermanned military base. While helping with a foraging mission, his family is taken by foreigners sent to evacuate any survivors. Stranded, Edgar and his comrades must travel across a scarred Britain to get to the evacuation point on the coast. Travel is near impossible in any other way except on foot, and the clock is ticking on the boats leaving, so one day he starts running …
Despite a meandering start, it’s a pretty solid post-apocalyptic novel, with many gripping scenes and plenty of insight into the practicalities and mentality framing survival. Thematically, the story is similar to TRAIN TO BUSAN, in which a neglectful father learns the importance of family when everything else is stripped away by the apocalypse. The characters are for the most part likeable, their actions and dialogue realistic, and the scarred vistas they cross horrible and dangerous. In between, we have a series of stock villains one encounters in apocalyptic literature, from bandits to warlords, in sprawling subplots. The result for this reader is the novel might have really roared if it had been about a third shorter, and if the main character, who acts as the narrator, was more likeable.
Overall, I think it’s a great book for people who don’t normally read apocalyptic literature, and for genre fans hungry for an interesting if well-traveled story.
Leave a Reply