The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whatever.

The whateverpocalypse. That’s what Touré, a twenty-something Cambridge coder, calls it after waking up one morning to find himself seemingly the only person left in the city. Once he finds Robbie and Carol, two equally disoriented Harvard freshmen, he realizes he isn’t alone, but the name sticks: Whateverpocalypse. But it doesn’t explain where everyone went. It doesn’t explain how the city became overgrown with vegetation in the space of a night. Or how wild animals with no fear of humans came to roam the streets.

Add freakish weather to the mix, swings of temperature that spawn tornadoes one minute and snowstorms the next, and it seems things can’t get much weirder. Yet even as a handful of new survivors appear—Paul, a preacher as quick with a gun as a Bible verse; Win, a young professional with a horse; Bethany, a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent; and Ananda, an MIT astrophysics adjunct—life in Cambridge, Massachusetts gets stranger and stranger.

The self-styled Apocalypse Seven are tired of questions with no answers. Tired of being hunted by things seen and unseen. Now, armed with curiosity, desperation, a shotgun, and a bow, they become the hunters. And that’s when things truly get weird.  

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I love apocalypse and post apocalypse novels. It's a vicarious joy; I'm well aware that I'd never manage to actually survive an apocalypse. Unless, like the characters here, I was ... well, that's a spoiler I don't want to give you until you've read it.

This rates somewhere around the middle of the ones I've read. It's an interesting idea, but apart from Robbie I never really felt connected with any of the characters. Robbie's reluctant growth into a leader was about the best story arc anyone had.

I loved the setting, although since I've never been to Cambridge some of the locations were lost on me. The descriptions of the plants, animals, broken down cars and so on were fantastic, though. Really atmospheric and clever.

I had to think about the ending for a while before I got it straight. A couple of parts still don't make a lot of sense to me, but I can muddle along without them, they were minor details. Overall, once I figured it out, it made sense and was quite clever.

A good read; I won't be rushing back immediately to read it again, but I will read it again, more likely than not.

The Apocalypse Seven publishes on the 25th of May, 2021. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.