It’s been so long since I picked up a book on a whim and was absolutely blown away by it, but that’s exactly what happened here. I was intrigued by the cover (this is becoming a habit), so I started reading it without having heard of it before. And it was incredible!
Six months before a massive meteor is going to wipe out the earth, Detective Hank Palace is working a murder case that, at first glance, looks like a suicide. While almost everyone else has quit their job, or at least doesn’t really care about it anymore, he is determined to find the killer.
While I am always a fan of a good crime novel, the whodunit-plot (if amazing) is not the thing that I loved most about this book. It was the setting! With the certainty that most of the population will die in six months, Winters explores the effects such an outlook would have on society, and the changes that would need to occur. The entire concept was just so great and interesting backdrop for the story! Also, the way the protagonist deals with the impending doom is pure gold! There is so much sass in this, it’s incredible. And sometimes you get gems like this:
“You want to pray to someone, pray to Bruce Willis in Armageddon.”
The characters are another thing I loved in this book. While I have to say that it was hard for me to remember all their names, everyone seemed incredibly real and three-dimensional. It was really interesting to see how Winters portrayed different types of reactions to the end of the world, and the different ways that people deal with it.
At the first glance, this seems like a classic mystery novel, and at the second one maybe a sci-fi book, the story deals with fundamental and interesting questions like what is really important in our lives, and it makes you wonder what you would do with only six months to live. It also makes you reflect on the things you take for granted – and the normality of saying ‘some day’. The concept of the story (and the execution of the worldbuilding) did remind me of ‘Station Eleven’, another book I absolutely adore!
So, if you’re into dystopian, end-of-the-world novels, enjoy a good mystery, and love a funny main character and a surprising and original plot, this book’s definitely for you!
Teilen mit:
