Station Eleven

When I try to describe Station Eleven, the word tapestry comes to mind. Or maybe jigsaw puzzle. This book is about an apocalyptic event that destroys civilization as we know it and the years following. It's about finding hope again, and love and inspiration, in the wake of a catastrophe.

Station Eleven deals with the fallout of a strain of flu that is highly contagious, highly lethal, and very quick moving. Most people are dead within a day of showing first symptoms, and anyone who comes in contact with them is dead a day later. Only those who mange to avoid exposure are spared, but they're faced with a world that has ground to a halt. Survival is the first order of business. But the Travelling Symphony, who wander between settlements performing music and plays, have decided that Seven of Nine was right: Survival is insufficient.

The book bounces back and forth, between timelines and characters, creating a picture of what happened during the outbreak and in the decades following.It doesn't take long to realize that all these characters are connected. They all knew an actor, Arthur Leander, who died of a heart attack hours before the outbreak hit. The comic books his first wife drew are also key in informing the new world views of those who survived, giving them a common and specific touchstone.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It provides an amazing view of a post-apocalyptic landscape and the people who refuse to believe that the apocalypse has actually happened. After all, they're still there. Putting the pieces together is a lot of fun, and I managed to stay just half a step ahead of the characters in figuring everything out. But it's the quieter moments, when they realize that there are still things worth living and fighting for, that make this story so wonderful

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Crown of Swords

Image
The seventh book of the  Wheel of Time  series is where many people agree that the series takes a dive in quality. Although I think it's less that anything changes significantly and more that people get tired of how stagnant the books are becoming. Nearly nothing happens in this book. Jordan still has serious issues writing female characters and romantic relationships. The world is continuing to be expanded on, and the rules of the magic system are slowly (so slowly) becoming more clear. But this is also a step down in terms of length. We go from a few 1000 page books in a row to one that's only 850 pages (and the next is less than 700!). Combine that with my brilliant idea to read  A Tale of Two Cities  right before this book, and I positively flew through it. I think you have to reach a sort of zen state to get through this series. There are a lot of side plots, a lot of world building, a lot of descriptions of clothing. Rather than just hating certain characters, you hav
Read more

The People We Keep

This was a really sweet coming of age tale about finding your way and finding your family. Aprils' mother walked out when she was little and her father wasn't much more present. By the time she's sixteen, April is basically on her own, stuck in a small town where everyone looks down on her and even her father mostly pretends that she doesn't exist. And then she realizes that she can leave, too. So April heads out for life on the road, working odd jobs, writing and singing songs, making friends and fleeing before anyone can get too close. And through it all her music sustains her. My favorite part of this book, hands-down, was the soundtrack. April's love of music, and the way the author uses it to set the scene and drill right into her emotional state was fantastic. I kept having to put the book down so I could bring up songs on youtube and listen to them while I read certain passages. This was just an overall enjoyable book. I had a lot of sympathy for April being
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more