Gene Doucette: "The Apocalypse Seven" (ARC Review)

Title: The Apocalypse Seven [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Gene Doucette [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Sci-Fi, Thriller/Mystery
Year: 2021
Age: 16+
Stars: 3.5/5
Pros: Nice variation on the post-apocalypse trope with an unexpected twist. Lots of diversity (though most of it is barely addressed).
Cons: The characters, while solid, don't generate a strong emotional connection with the reader.
WARNING! Despite the characters' predicament, nothing overly graphic to report, but there's a death by fire.
Will appeal to: Sci-fi fans who can appreciate a tragic but entertaining twist. Readers who care more about the actual story than they do about getting attached to the humans in it.

Blurb: 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. (Amazon)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

A TWISTED TALE

First off, this is one of those books that grow on you the second time you read them (well, it did for me 😉), though I ultimately decided to stand by my original rating because I tend to love character-driven books more, and despite there being a number of them, I didn't feel like this was the case - but such reread will impact my review nonetheless. There's no denying that, despite lacking the extra oomph for me, TAS is well written, nicely plotted, able to revitalise the age-old post-apocalyptic scenario, and it's got a unique, unexpected twist that pays off (I mean the ultimate twist, because there's more than one) and that fans of Doctor Who, especially of the Matt Smith era, will eat up (I'm first and foremost a David Tennant devotee, but let's get real - not only Matt's Doctor was fantastic, but had hands down the best, if often craziest, stories). Sometimes I like my books better the second time around because I know where they're heading, which may not be true for most readers; but in cases like this, the anticipation of what one knows is going to happen (or to have happened...) makes the story more exciting...for people like me at least. [...]

ATTACHMENT ISSUES

The Apocalypse Seven are a varied bunch on various levels: different ethnicities and ways of life of course, but other kinds of diversity as well (notably, there's a blind character and a neuroatypical one, plus another character who's revealed to be queer at the end of the story). Most of them come with specific abilities (mind you, abilities, NOT superpowers) that are very useful in their predicament, and if that feels a bit convenient, it's also a way for the story to progress, so I'm not complaining. Moreover, a few of those abilities are paired with the characters you'd least expect to have them, which is a refreshing angle. On the other hand, despite the author's best efforts, it takes more than quirkiness on the characters' part to get attached to them, and diversity alone doesn't do the trick when it mostly remains on the surface - which is why TAS lacks the extra layer that only a strong connection with its protagonists could have generated.

FUNNY SIDE UP

What sets TAS apart from most post-apocalyptic scenarios is the fact that the characters wake up in a dilapidated - and apparently deserted - world with no clue why, and WHEN, it happened. Last time they checked, everything was perfectly normal. The reason behind their predicament ultimately turns out to be both tropey and unexpected, mainly because of how it's played out. I have to admit there's a cheesy edge in that respect, but upon rereading, I realised that it fits in with the humorous tone that the story manages to retain amidst the challenges our heroes face and their attempts to make sense of what befell them - not to mention the shocking denouement (and this kind of approach, if you're tired of post-apocalyptic stories full of doom and gloom, mostly works). So, all in all, TAS is definitely recommended for everyone who likes sci-fi and/or end-of-the-world narratives with a twist (or two, or three) and a pinch of humour, and doesn't necessarily need to fall in love with their (still solid) characters.

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