A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen is a post-apocalyptic tale that takes place 6 years after a pandemic. In an opening prologue that gives you a glimpse of the panic as the pandemic breaks out, a British pop star called Mojo is in concert (in New York, I think) when everyone receives a phone warning that the disease has spread out of control and the concert ends abruptly.

In the current time, 6 years post-disaster, the world is very different. 70% of the world's population died during the epidemic and the survivors are just trying to get some semblance of a normal life, but everything has changed. There are people who abide by the rules and try to get housing in the cities and those who've gone off-grid. There are also plenty of outlaws and a lot of mental health issues caused by a post-traumatic stress related to the pandemic. The government is trying to get a grip on all this by following any further potential outbreaks of the disease closely. Housing is also strictly controlled and families are watched carefully for signs that parents are unable to take care of their children due to the post-apocalyptic syndrome that burdens so many.

Mojo is now Moira, a young woman working an everyday job. She's engaged and has hired Krista to do her wedding planning. Krista does anything she can to earn money and she's in desperate need of a cash infusion to prevent losing her current home. She's a character who doesn't like to think of her messy past and youthful trauma, but it affects her in many ways. It's hard to know whether to admire Krista or scrunch your nose at her in distaste.

Moira works with Rob, a widower with a daughter named Sunny who keeps to himself. Sunny has been acting out in school and the agency that watches out for family stress is threatening to take her away from Rob. He's aware that he has contributed to the problem but he's a good father. Rob needs people to testify on his behalf that he's a good and caring parent but he's been such a loner since the pandemic that he doesn't have any friends to help out.

I can't remember how Rob encounters Krista but he enlists her help (for pay). Meanwhile, Rob becomes friends with Moira. As the three lives intersect, fear is rising. There have been several rumored breakouts of the illness that caused the pandemic.

Will Rob be able to keep his daughter from being taken away and put in a place where he doesn't believe his child will be cared for properly? When Moira's father begins a very public search for her as Mojo and her face is splashed everywhere, will someone turn her in? Is Krista really willing to do anything for money or does she have a heart in there, somewhere? Will there be another pandemic? If so, what will happen to everyone? Will the population survive?

Recommended - I was so crazy about Mike Chen's first book, Here and Now and Then, that I pre-ordered A Beginning at the End. While I ended up giving it a 4/5 because the second half of A Beginning at the End becomes exciting, tense, and even a little heart-pounding, I struggled with the beginning of the book because the challenges were kind of . . . meh. And, I kept getting Krista and Moira confused. After I resolved my issue with keeping the two female characters distinct in my mind and once the pace picked up, I loved the book enough to raise it from an average rating to above average. It didn't sweep me up quite the way Here and Now and Then did, but it's worth sticking out the beginning — if you consider it slow, as I did — for the exciting latter part when it appears that the virus may be spinning out of control, again, and everything is going wrong. It's worth noting that I've already thought about rereading A Beginning at the End, so while I'm not giving it my highest recommendation, that latter half was thrilling enough to think about revisiting.

Also worth mentioning: Mike Chen's stories contain elements that I love (time travel; dystopia) but both of his books are, at their heart, stories about family being the most important thing in life. I love that. I will definitely watch for more by Mike Chen.


On a side note: What timing. I read A Beginning at the End in January, before the Coronavirus outbreak exploded. I wonder what Mike Chen thinks of what's happening. I keep finding myself reflecting back on the story. You get glimpses of what happened during the pandemic in A Beginning at the End, but it's told in flashbacks so there's a bit of distance. In fact, I did find myself thinking that I might have preferred a story about the pandemic to one about the aftermath. Then, I kind of got what I wanted in the second half when it becomes more tense, although there were plenty of surprises.

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

"Where are you going, Mark? What are you traveling for?"

He stares into the miasma, at the rain-ghosted trees as the drops prickle-smack around them. It seems he has ignored her and Kate turns away. But then, still staring at the rain, he says, "Because I've not found anywhere like home." 

~p. 139

In the near future, almost everyone has a chip implanted in his or her brain. The chip connects them to the Feed. Everything you can do on the Internet (in today's world) is done inside your brain via the Feed. It's so all-consuming and so good at thinking for you that when the entire system, the electrical grid, and society collapse, people don't know how to do much of anything.

Tom and Kate and their daughter have managed to survive for 6 years after the apocalyptic Collapse. They live with a motley group of survivors and they're still trying to figure out how to get power and grow food. When Tom is followed home after an expedition to find fuel and the children from their camp are kidnapped, others viciously attacked, Tom and Kate set out into a dangerous new world to find the children.

Recommended, especially to lovers of SciFi and thrillers - The Feed by Nick Clark Windo is the one book that I keep thinking about, this month. It took me quite some time to get into the story because it was initially confusing. The author doesn't baby you. He doles out information about what happened verrrrry slooooowly, so you're theorizing and trying to understand and sometimes just flat confused, at first. Eventually, though, the story of what caused the Collapse begins to come together and when it does, the cause is kind of surprising.

I had a little trouble with some of the world building in The Feed, but to describe it would give a bit too much away. I think it's best to leave the description somewhat sketchy. Even without fully buying into some elements, once I got into The Feed I was totally swept up in it. I wanted to know what it meant to be "taken" -- one of the things the author keeps you guessing about for quite a long time -- and how the Collapse occurred. Did I feel like I got all the answers? Nope, not entirely. Some minor aspects I felt like I was still guessing at, in the end, or just didn't buy into. It didn't matter. I was fascinated by this apocalyptic vision, I found the ending satisfying, and I can't wait to see what Nick Clark Windo comes up with, next.

Addendums:

Totallly forgot to mention that I received this book from the publisher. My thanks to HarperCollins! And, it's also worth mentioning that I didn't manage to write a Monday Malarkey post, this week, because I didn't have access to a computer, yesterday. I've got a busy week with some reviews already pre-posted, so I'm not going to do a substitute for the usual Malarkey post. Instead, I'll do two weeks' worth of Malarkey next Monday.


©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank - RIP #1

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Copyright 1959
Harper Perennial fiction
323 pages

Alas, Babylon is the tale of what could have happened if the Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R. in the 1950's had suddenly become a true nuclear holocaust. The book has become a classic of apocalyptic fiction, so there's a good bit of extra information in the "Modern Classics" printing shown in the image above - a foreword by science fiction author David Brin, a preface, a bio of the book's author, Pat Frank, plus a second afterward section that goes into further detail about the author's life and other works of the time period. I read them all and found every detail interesting. Nothing bored me or made me roll my eyes (just so you know).

I didn't know a lot about Alas, Babylon, apart from the fact that it was apocalyptic, going into the book. What surprised me most is that it's firmly entrenched in the time period. Instead of setting the book in the future, the author's goal was apparently to show what would happen "right now" (and the copyright date is 1959, so "now" was the late 50's) if the Cold War was to escalate into a third world war. The result is a fascinating look not only into the what-if of a potential nuclear war, but also into the time period in which the book was set. I think the book was worth the time spent reading, if only for a good view of the lifestyle, values and prejudices in small-town Florida in the 1950's. There are some sentiments similar to those we often see expressed, today:

"I keep the library open Saturdays. That's my only chance to get the young ones. Evenings and Sundays, they're paralyzed by TV."

Of course, the difference is that the television paralysis goes on 24 hours a day, now. Anyone remember the days when Sunday night was a special TV evening, thanks to "The Wonderful World of Disney"? And, Saturday mornings were cartoon time, but the moment "The Wide World of Sports" came on, Saturday TV was over for children? I'm not sure if those particular shows were on in 1959, but I do remember that television for children remained limited to within certain hours until the advent of The Disney Channel and all those other content-specific channels that have now been around for an entire generation's viewing.

Back to the book . . . The entire story takes place in a small town in central Florida. About the first 90 pages or so serve as the set-up, during which the reader meets the protagonist, Randy Bragg, his brother, his sister-in-law, neighbors, girlfriend and a few townspeople. Randy is a kind and basically good person who lives in a small section of the sprawling Bragg family home. His brother, Mark, is a military man and has expressed some concern about the potential of a nuclear war. To this end, the brothers have chosen words from a section of the book of Revelation in the King James Bible as the signal to indicate when danger is imminent. Mark signals the danger and sends his family to stay with Randy. And, within a short time, the bombs begin landing.

Here is where the book becomes gripping. As bombs fall and mushroom clouds sprout, radio chatter is limited to military use and the citizens are left in the dark, unsure (apart from the obvious) what exactly is happening. When the closest large city is hit, the source of power generation in tiny Fort Repose is lost. Fortunately, Randy has already begun collecting supplies and has a good start when the bombs begin to hit. So the protagonist is the most prepared of all the characters in the novel. The local doctor also helps stock Randy with medical supplies after the beginning of the war. As the fact that Fort Repose - if not the entire United States - has been thrown back in time by the loss of electricity, gas, radio, batteries, phone service and currency becomes obvious, the citizens begin to adapt.

At the beginning of the book, Randy is a little on the lazy side. He sits around in his pajamas and is just a bit of a lost soul. I loved this quote by his girlfriend:

"This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You're vegetating. I don't want a vegetable. I want a man."

Of course, then the women end up serving the men tea cooked over the fire and a few other uncomfortable facts of life in the Fifties - chiefly a strong racial prejudice - are described. Annoying and shocking as they can be, the book is unflinchingly honest about life in that time period. The author also did a pretty stunning job of describing the effects of being thrown backwards in time. Some of us have, unfortunately, experienced that sudden isolation as power, telephone, cellular phone and radio service disappeared after Hurricane Katrina hit. It was every bit as upsetting and strange as Frank described. To this day, I don't think a lot of people realize that we actually had no idea how widespread the damage was for nearly 24 hours - contact with the outside world was that thoroughly cut off, grocery stores and citizens lost their entire refrigerated and frozen stock, dry foods and water disappeared as soon as the stores reopened, people fought over gas for generators. I can tell you that the book is realistic to the experience in many ways.

While I personally thought the reasoning for the nuclear war was extremely weak and there were a few things the author overlooked - bicycles, for example, I thought should have become a highly coveted possession and I wondered why nobody mentioned trying to harness the power of the nearby river, wind or sun as power sources - I thought Alas, Babylon was, overall, a spectacular look at what life could end up like in the event of widespread nuclear disaster. And, of course, it does serve as an excellent peek into history.

4/5 - clear writing, excellent story with only a few noticeable flaws and definitely deserving of its classic status in my humble opinion.

This is my first completed book for the RIP II Challenge.

Next up: reviews of Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin and Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River by Velma Wallis. I may make those mini-reviews - we'll see.

We're now in the mid- to upper-80's, but the daylight hours are comfortable enough (before the warmest part of the day hits) that I need to limit my computer time in order to get some major outdoor work accomplished. So, I may just dip in to write reviews and post occasionally, for the next few weeks. I'll apologize in advance, in case I'm unable to do much blog-hopping. We have to take advantage of decent weather while we've got it.

Later, bookish people!

Bookfool, feeling invigorated by the cooler air