The End of the World Running Club

I loved this story! There is never a dull moment, the characters are real, and it is told beautifully by an author who knows how to use words! I am so happy to have found Adrian J Walker and can't wait to read more from him! If you enjoy apocalyptic tales, this is one you should not miss.

The story keeps you on your toes. I don't want to say to much and ruin the story. If you like stories with lots of drama this has it. It was easy for me to feel for the main character in the story and I found him likable in spite of his faults.

Best book I've read in a long time. I'm exhausted from staying up late reading and then getting up early for work but couldn't put it down. The characters were wonderfully flawed and real and inspirational all at the same time and I can't wait to read Adrian's other books.

It is extremely difficult to come up with a unique character these days. At first I didn't like the main character. But as his struggle increased I began to sympathize. As a jogger of several decades I could relate to the running even though it was a bit fantastic that a non-runner could suddenly accomplish what he did. Unexpected though believable ending. A very enjoyable story.

This is not your typical end of the world novel,the lead charactor is not a macho gun totting guy he's just an average overweight family man,not a hero in any way.I have read more books of this genre than i can remember & have to say this book is a standout,a great & realistic story of what an average man could achieve when pushed to limit.A great read start to finish.

For me, this book was a wonderful, entertaining surprise. I was doubtful when I read the description of the book, but took a chance and was rewarded. An interesting storyline, descriptive writing, twists, this book was a page turner that was difficult to put down. I've recommended this book to my friends without hesitation. Enjoy.

Excellent story and well written. As with any end of... book you have an idea of where the book is going but the author puts enough twists in to keep the reader from becoming complacent. I especially liked the flawed protagonist. He starts out far from perfect and but doesn't become the "perfect" survivor by books end. I enjoyed this very much.

I honestly could not put t his book down, I liked the story, the characters, the pace - well everything. I will be reading more from this author but first I need a few days to let this one really soak in

Much of what I think of this book is in the other reviews. I liked it isboth light and dark. Its gritty but not pointlessly gritty. While some of the characters die, it isn't so full of everyone dying you become numb to it. The characters are well written, human and with maybe one or two exceptions, not cardboard cutouts. The descriptions of the landscape are some of the best.

Compelling, engrossing, depressing, consuming. Seriously, I laughed and I cried. Hated the guy. Loved the guy. Rooted for the guy. Put the book down for a while. Kept going back to it. Looking forward to his future books!

Loved this book... If you've ever wondered what society would devolve into after a catastrophic event like a meteor strike, this book will paint one plausible scenario. Dark and terrifying but eminently readable.

Got this book somewhat randomly on a bargain, but it's a great read to realise what really matters in life. The tone is sometimes bleak at times, but the book starts on a very good foot and keeps a decent pace all throughout. Pun intended.

I don't post a lot of reviews, but this one really deserves acknowledgement. Fantastic blend of character development and enough action to keep the story moving. It grabbed me from the start and I read it in two days. Look forward to his next one !

I felt the book was well written but I couldn’t ever generate much interest in the main character. So throughout I really didn’t care what happened to him. I found myself rushing through the book just to see the conclusion. When I got to the end I was underwhelmed because there was no connection.

Maybe you’ll find something here but I didn’t.

I love science fiction and have read a lot, so have trouble finding new authors that I feel have something new to offer. Walker's book is one that I would recommend if you like realistic science fiction with lots of unexpected twists.

Loved this book. Bought it because I am a long distance runner myself, but although the book states some very true and recognizable truths about running, it is about so much more, and I would recommend it to anyone.

It's not often I take time to actually write a review, but I loved this book that much. It made me smile and cry in all the best possible ways. Well written with amazing characters. Thank you. A truly great read.

I really am stuck on what to say. This was very, Very busy and all over the place! I had no idea what the author was trying to describe with the scenario or places these people were at. The two stars are for the characters. I could visualize them and feel their emotions but was left feeling like I had just "ran" a marathon in my brain trying to figure out what was happening. The spelling errors normally don't affect my opinions but with this being a British or whatever country this took place in, the dialogue was hard to follow also. Finally, the ending SUCKED! After all that??? won't spoil the ending but you will know what I mean....

End of the world running club
Let's get this straight from the start: I enjoyed this story and read it in a matter of days which is good for me. So I do reccomend it even though my review might suggest otherwise.
From page one I disliked the narrator which made reading the story difficult. And I was supposed to dislike him, I get that, but why read on if I don’t care whether he survives apocalypse or not.
Strangely enough the plot kept me going. The twists and turns were enough, but I never got to like the narrator.
Earth has been attacked by a bombardment of asteroids and the UK is in a bad way. Folk have turned feral and Ed, the narrator, and his family have taken refuge in their cellar to wait out the initial madness.
Rescued by a thermal image seeking chopper they find themselves living in an army bunker and foraging in the nearby towns for food and water.
On one such journey, Ed the overweight narrator with attitude toward everyone but himself returns to the bunker to find his family have been evacuated to Falmouth for resettlement in Southern Africa.
Ed sets out on a journey. He has three months to run from Scotland to the bottom end of Cornwall. He is overweight and lacks heart but through the plodding path he begins to find himself, enliven his passion and find a reason to live.
Obstacles there are a plenty and his band of fellow runners dwindles, but Ed plods on. I honestly felt poorly as his journey continued. I mean pieces kept breaking and snapping off his battered body and with the aid of sticking plaster he continued the journey.
At one point they watch a religious experience from a cliff where people dressed in white singing hymns are being drowned. I didn’t get what that was about.
By the time I got to the end of the story I felt his pain and was happy for the man, but there was no yee ha moment as I never liked Ed to start with and felt his family were always going to be better off without him.
Roo

This post-apocalyptic story set in the UK promised some refreshingly new elements for the genre and started out feeling like it was going to be a light-hearted and absurd story (mostly, it's not). I mean... that title!! It certainly affected the way I went into the story and my expectations.

We meet some ordinary Joe in Edinburgh, Scotland who sets the tone for absurdities ahead as some overweight drone who's numb to the world. Edgar Hill has all the comforts of a satisfying life: job, family, plenty of food and drink. But he has passion and appreciation for nothing. He neglects his wife and two young children while he self-medicates with too much food and alcohol, not really examining the why's or purpose of his life. Life is just too mind-numbingly comfortable.

Enter the asteroids... maybe 30-50 thousand which hit mostly the Northern Hemisphere of the planet and turn the UK into a wasteland. Edgar and the fam end up on an organized, military-run survival camp where he falls back into the routine of avoiding his family.

Enter the separation... Edgar misses a major rescue mission while wife and children are taken and headed for the boats taking people to the safety of other countries. Edgar is abandoned at the end of the world (or rather, the end of the UK) with a group of 6 other "losers" who don't seem likely to survive. There's a couple of fat guys, an old guy, two evil guys, and a female soldier. (And this about sums up the author's view of females in the book.) They learn the boats are leaving in about 3 weeks so that means they've got to trek around 500 miles before they are truly abandoned. Off they go encountering some of the usual genre tropes and finding plenty of trouble along the way because they're just a group of ordinary dopes.

Some readers hated Edgar, but I thought he was a very well-chosen and relatable character with massive room to grow who just didn't get enough of his absurdities highlighted. He finds purpose and determination in his goal to find his family again... something I liked and feel humans need besides all the comforts of life. As I read, I wondered if this was about a lost loser atoning and becoming a better husband and father... or just some absurd commentary by the author that it'll take the end of the world to get some dopey fat guys off the couch and find some purpose (and physical exercise) in today's world. Too bad he didn't run more with the latter because sometimes I wondered what this story wanted to be. Moreover, out of the 7 in the group, there's only 3 I could actually remember clearly. Some hardly talked at all. Women are mostly muted in the story. These guys could have been a much more lively group of "misfits."

I just felt like a lot of the needed humor and absurdity is absent here. The story only got increasingly serious and sad and you kinda feel mislead because of that title and because of these dopey guys. Moreover, the whole running plan doesn't even go down until the second half of the story... so those of you who think this is all Forrest Gump running across the UK will be sadly mistaken. It isn't all running, even when they do run. I didn't have a problem with that, I'm just sayin' that title makes you think otherwise.

Lastly, the ending irritated me. Not because of how it ended, but because of a certain ambiguity plopped in.

Despite its flaws, the ordinary guys in the apocalypse and the running stuff was a streak of originality here, and overall, I was mildly engaged. Spots of very good writing. Otherwise I'd say the writing was mostly just okay. The story was over-long and full of all the usual tropes.

An interesting apocalyptic novel, The End of the World Running Club didn't quite meet my expectations, but it was still an enjoyable book covering an intriguing concept.

Quite honestly, this is one of those books that proves to be so hard to review. Let's start off with what I did like. The prologue and the first chapters which detail and cover the actual lead-up to the apocalyptic event, the event itself, and the immediate aftermath was so well-done. It was riveting and emotional. Edgar, our narrator, is a 35 year old man who leaves a lot to be desired. He's a layabout at heart, just with a job. He is a disappointing husband, father, and citizen. But, there's nothing really wrong with him, he just seems to lack oomph. He doesn't do much, and he admits it. And, at this point in the story, his flaws are laid out and fairly relatable. So when the asteroids/meteors start to rain down on Earth, he and his small family (wife and two young kids) hunker down in their tiny cellar in Scotland. The coverage of this event and the emotional turmoil Ed and his wife, Beth, go through down in that cellar with their young daughter, Alice, and their still-nursing baby, Arthur, was written so well. This section was edge-of-your-seat, nail biting good.

However, the story was inconsistent after that. The four are eventually rescued and the novel jumps to months later as we follow Ed through the integration into the newly formed interim-society at the barracks with the other survivors, Ed's flaws take the seat front and center. He's whiny. He's self-centered. He's everything that makes your eyes roll and your lips curl as you force out a resigned sigh. But, I recognize that he's supposed to be that way. And, here's where I think the novel could've been handled better.

My problem with Ed, is that he doesn't really change over the course of the book, despite the fact that I'm lead to believe he should...or even does. But, he doesn't really. Ed gets separated from his family still fairly early on in the story. His wife and children are picked up at the barracks with many other survivors to be taken down to the southern tip of England where they will await a departure by boat to be taken elsewhere. Ed and a handful of other misfit toys spend the rest of the novel trekking their way across England to get to the boats and (for some) their families in time.

Ed berates himself, he chastises, and he searches for his own redemption...but not really. What happens here instead—especially once all hope seems lost and he spontaneously begins running as a last ditch effort to get to his family on time—is that he isn't hoping for redemption. He's hoping for the chance at redemption. He overcomes the physical effort of getting his out-of-shape body to run, but he makes very little emotional progress. He's not actually running to see his family, he's running because he thinks he's supposed to want to desperately see his family.

The majority of the novel is spent with the runners as they encounter different obstacles along the way. I recognize how hard it probably is to not fall into the trap of clichéd ideas for post-apocalyptic events, and Walker manages to dodge it most of the time. It's almost a little too much like being in a museum of various post-apocalyptic outcomes—a set of dioramas displaying the different ways different people(s) handle this traumatic aftereffect. But, many of the characters Walker creates along the way for Ed to discover are just on the good side of believable and fairly developed. Those are the more enjoyable moments and ultimately what helped keep this novel afloat.

If you like apocalyptic books, this one is certainly worth the chance. There's a little bit of an ambiguous ending, but nothing that detracts from this if it remains a stand-alone.

Usually I don't look at other reviews before I write mine but this time I did and I am struck by the complaints about the book's pacing in several of the ≤ 3* reviews. Yes, the book is slow in places but somehow it seemed a bit like running.

Don't runners zone out? Don't runners slip in and out of extreme consciousness? Don't runners ache as they run? The book is a little like this.

These days I don't much like post-apocalyptic writing because it is all so similar and was done so much better 75 years ago before everyone was so self-conscious about it. So this book won't rank high on my all-time list. But it really isn't bad at all unless you are as jaded as I am.

I received a review copy of "The End of the World Running Club" by Adrian Walker (Sourcebooks Landmark) through NetGalley.com. It was originally self-published in 2014 in the UK by Adrian Walker and then picked up by Del Rey UK who issued it in paperback in 2016.

I've read a lot of post-apocalyptic stories in the last few years. In a sea of zombies and commandos, this book really stands out.

Edgar is bored to death and mooching along through his life, doing the bare minimum at work and avoiding his family in favor of alcohol and television. Everything is weighing him down: his family, his thoughts, his body. Mentally, he's a mess--he feels trapped. Then the world ends, and he IS trapped. He and his family have survived, but now what? More of the same, only with different food and a ruined landscape?

But when his family is evacuated without him, Edgar must travel from Scotland to the south coast of England to find them. More survivors agree to go along. But driving is out of the question, and with 450 miles to go in a limited time, walking isn't going to work either. So they begin to run.

I should say here that though I'm an exerciser, I'm not really big on books about the subject. I was a little afraid this would turn into one of those self-help numbers where somebody impossibly fit does an amazing thing and Learns All About Life in the process. But that isn't what happened to Edgar. I'm not sure if I can describe what happens to Edgar--while he does learn all about life, it isn't quite the way you might think!

That's because Edgar isn't some hyper-focused narcissist on a quest to make himself a better person (meaning, better person than YOU). He's a regular, modern adult whose worries and problems could belong to any middle-aged person. Watching him handle his circumstances was more inspiring than a hundred self-help books. Even though this is a post-apocalyptic novel, it's incredibly hopeful--I guess because, to paraphrase one of the characters, hope is brightest when the world is the darkest.

This is far and away the best book I've read this year. If you're looking for zombies and goo, there are plenty of great series out there. But if you want to know what it must feel like to go from surviving a disaster to really living through one, this book's for you.

The End of the World Running Club is the first novel by British author, Adrian J. Walker. Edgar Hill is a husband and father of two, albeit not a very good one. He is quick to shift responsibility for care of Alice and Arthur on his hard-working wife, Beth. Ed is pretty lazy, if he can get away with it; he also drinks too much, eats too much and he definitely does not like running or, for that matter, physical exertion of any sort. But now he is running. He is running from Edinburgh to Cornwall.

Ed and his family were very lucky (no real thanks to Ed) to survive the apocalyptic event that ravaged Edinburgh, Britain, and probably much of the Northern Hemisphere. And now everything is different. There is some sort of rescue imminent, but somehow Ed and a few others miss out. His family is on the other side of the country, and he is desperate to join them. A group of seven set out: three soldiers, who seem to take charge, and four men from very different backgrounds. They soon realise that no vehicle is going to get them where they need to be. But can a grossly unfit man, even with the best of intentions and the most fervent encouragement, run there?

While the post-apocalyptic novel has been done many, many times, Walker’s take on it is a good one. As well as the tensions within the group, there are the encounters with other survivors. Of course, the extremes of human behaviour are exhibited: the group do their best to maintain decency, but there are those whose focus on their own survival leads them just one tiny step short of cannibalism. Gross cruelty, selfishness, cowardice and a hunger for power are countered with valour, incredible kindness, amazing generosity and altruism.

Walker is skilled at portraying the sort of hopeless, sort of misfitting male, as readers of The Last Dog on Earth will know, and although Ed Hill is nothing like Reginald Hardy, there are similarities. He gives them both wise observations: “I believe what I believe to make life less terrifying. That’s all beliefs are: stories we tell ourselves to stop being afraid. Beliefs have very little to do with the truth.” Certainly, Ed does have some insight: “I was no hunter, no engineer, no fighter. I was nothing the world needed me to be. Nothing that my family needed me to be. I did what my body wanted me to do: eat, sleep, stay still, f%ck, eat, sleep.”

Walker’s descriptive prose is often gorgeous. On a glass of whiskey: “I took a particularly large mouthful. It was glorious, nothing short of it. The way I was feeling – bone soaked and frozen – a capful of cheap supermarket rum would have done the job, but this was something special. I could taste it immediately, as if a door I’d never seen had been flung open onto a long, wide landscape of forest, earth and ocean, tall stone pillars clawed with brine and weed, cold starry skies, ancient, candlelit rooms, deep eyes, short lives and whispered promises. I felt as if somebody had filled my head with a thousand years of secret, guarded memories.” A superb debut novel.

The end of the world finally happened like we all knew it would. Not because of zombies, or some strange virus, or even an alien attack from Planet Xymzko. Nope, it came when meteorites hit the Earth, demolishing the planet and killing millions and millions of people.

But Edgar Hill and his family somehow survived, not that Ed really paid much attention to the warnings that England was sending out. Nope, it was by pure luck that he was up and about in a semi drunken stupor that tragic sunny day when he saw the meteorites falling from the sky. He grabbed his wife, his little girl, and his infant son and basically threw them into the cellar where they lived until the army dug them out.

Living in the army camp with hundreds of other survivors wasn’t all that bad. They had food, water, and shelter, much more that what other survivors had. But some of these other survivors were not nice people. They tried to kill and steal and thought that this new Earth was theirs for the taking.

One day when Ed and a few others from the army camp were patrolling the area, helicopters came to the camp and took everyone to the other side of the country to get on boats that would take the survivors to another country. Edgar and the people he was with missed the helicopters but were told that more will come for them very shortly. The group might have been waiting for Godot because like Godot, the helicopters never showed up.

The only way the group could make it the hundreds of miles to where the boats were  was to run and they only had a few weeks to get there. Not easy when Edgar was out of shape, had to run broken ground, run around valleys that were created by the falling meteorites, and not to mention avoiding some very dangerous people living off the land.

“The End of the World Running Club” by Adrian J. Walker is a fairly decent novel considering it’s very similar to most dystopian books. You know, fending for yourself, looking for water, food, shelter, getting into conflicts with miserable people and dangerous communities.

It was different reading about a group of people who decided to run to get to their destination on time. If I had to run I’d kind of look up into the sky and decline. I have issues with just walking one mile, if I had to run hundreds ... nah, not for me.

On their journey Ed and his running mates run into the usual problems that beset all characters in this type of novel. Nothing really special going on but I did enjoy reading the close to 500 pages and it was interesting and easy to get through.

If dystopian books are your cup of tea give this a try. Just don't expect anything too special.

A devastating meteor strike ruins the whole of the UK. Our protagonist, Edgar Hill, a lazy overweight young husband and father of two small children becomes separated from his wife and kids and is faced with a long slog from Scotland to Cornwall – a 500-mile trip with virtually no wheeled transport available. Hence the title. Facing a deadline, Edgar – with a small crew of companions – must find a way to reach Cornwall in time to board a ship (and rejoin his wife and children) sailing for a safe place. Getting to Cornwall in time becomes a trial . . . uh, a TRIAL! Along the way, the small group faces incredible resistance, not least from other people. The terrain and weather serve to make travel even more difficult. Yes, this is an apocalyptic story. No, it’s utterly unlike the typical fare in this sub-genre. The author puts a literary spin in his prose that will sate the fussiest highbrow appetite and yet satisfy any reader who gravitates to this type of story. There is some graphic violence, but it is not gratuitous.
The author is also a runner and knows the trials and tribulations distance runners often face. Edgar must overcome the trials an out-of-shape non-runner must contend with. It’s less a race and more of an obstacle course – and, oh, the obstacles make this a delicious read! If you, dear reader, are a runner, or not, I think you’ll soon get lost in the story. Highly recommended.

This is not the kind of book I ever read. The only explanation I can come up with as to why I bought it is because I sometimes go on to read other reviews people write when I agree or like what they wrote. I must have found this book that way because I would never--out of the blue--choose an end of the world sort of book. And never would I have believed when I first started reading that I would enjoy this book as much as I did.

It wasn't love at first read. I couldn't and can't believe that scientists and the media would't be screaming about the asteroids headed toward earth. And, I can't believe that the people of the world didn't run out to clear the store shelves of toilet paper, water and everything else. It took me a long time to believe that nobody prepared, that people just woke up one morning to the unpleasantness of death and destruction.

Despite also being gruesome, this is a true adventure where ordinary people do amazing things to find their families--or to help friends find their families. Flawed people can still be heroes.

I loved this book and hope that someday there will be a sequel that tells us what happened to Bryce and Richard who faded away.

Edgar Hill is 35 years old, is married with a toddler and a baby - and to put it plainly, he's not the most involved husband or father. He and his family live in Scotland and he wakes up one morning, bleary eyed and irritable with a hangover, to find that the end of his world as he knows it is imminent. Thousands of meteorites start hitting the Earth, especially the Northern Hemisphere, and he frantically drags his family to their small cellar.

In the aftermath of the profound destruction of the U.K. and a good portion of the world, Edgar gets separated from his family and realizes just how much they mean to him.

No more details of the story except to say that Edgar would probably be pictured in the dictionary under the definition of "couch potato" and there is an abundance of running in the book.

If given a choice of what to read, I will automatically head to the post-apocalyptic section of either a virtual or a stones and mortar bookstore so I had great hopes for this book from the beginning. There was a bit too much of the philosophical in parts of the story whereas I prefer action but it still was a good story.

Edgar is a character that kind of grows on you (thank goodness) because he was a horse's ass towards the beginning of the book. There were some unique, memorable characters that I liked a lot throughout the course of the story - both good guys and bad guys. And author Walker created a world on these pages that I hope we never see.

I received this book from Sourcebooks Landmark through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

Adrian J. Walker's entry into the post-apocalyptic category of fiction is The End of the World Running Club, and it's a strong one. He has an antihero "ordinary man" running across a ravaged Britain to reunite with his family (who have been taken from him). The other members of the "Club" are each memorable characters too. The plot is also unique---although it does borrow from some post-apocalypse tropes, the story is also new and different in how it comes together. There are no zombies in this imagined world, just desperate survivors. This novel shares something with the nonfiction book Unbroken: Mr. Walker is so merciless and unrelenting in his descriptions of the characters' suffering that, although I was glad I made the journey with them, I don't want to make that trip again. I've no desire to see the Unbroken movie, and I doubt I'd care to see a movie version of Running Club either. (Even if they softened it up, it would just be like a bad Mad Max film.)

If Walking Dead hadn't killed off all of my small interest in a human toiling story, I might have liked it better. I did really like the beginning asteroid attack. It was vivid and scary. I found the rest of the book just okay. Kind of stalled in places, kind of overkill in others. One dystopian civilization after another after another is why we all got bored of The Walking Dead. The main character is aware of his shortcomings, but he doesn't really change all that much by the end, just transfers his insufferable attitude of how important his work and free time is to how transcendent his running passion is. You could see him doing that without an asteroid.

Love how he pondered why he and his wife thought her births were so hard when they had it well in the hospital. Well, buddy, you weren't on the difficult end. And he also says science requires faith the same as religion, which makes me think he needs to repeat basic high school coursework.

So in the end, the old guy got to prove his athleticism, the gruff guy got to prove he had a heart of gold, the lackluster father got to prove he really cared, the book got to prove it wasn't a zombie book after all by never introducing a killer virus (oh, wait...), but the few women characters simply had no arc. The moms especially had nothing else going on, which was evidenced by their either breastfeeding or talking about the kids at every single turn. I'm sure Walker did that to pull on our heartstrings (oh no, defenseless young moms! Did we mention that they're moms?) but gosh, let them tell a joke or have a history in roller derby or something that shows moms are actual human beings too. The dads in the story were all much fuller characters.

I have to wonder why no character could say with certainty what happened. We have asteroid chunks in museums, yet nobody in this book could find evidence after so many thousands fell. Why would Walker would be so cagey about verifying asteroids? Leaving it open for an "it was aliens after all" sequel?

Life on earth has been decimated by a bombardment of meteors. Where cities once stood are now craters. Where civilization has survived, death, chaos, and lawlessness prevail. This could be the start of any number of post-apocalyptic movies or novels. So the challenge of writing in this genre is finding an original voice or twist. Adrian J. Walker does just that in The End of the World Running Club.

Edgar Hill gets a few things right in the face of impending doom: he gathers a few supplies, gets bottled water, and helps his family to safety in the cellar of their home. After a couple weeks of increasing misery, trapped in a tiny space with their small children, their own stench, and dwindling food and drink, they are rescued and relocated to an army base. While he and a few other civilian survivors are out foraging for supplies, helicopters come and ferry Edgar's family and others from the base to another base. Ed and his companions are left behind.

After waiting for a second flight which never comes, and fighting off other, more feral, survivors, Ed is left with little choice but to head to the coast in hopes of meeting the ships that will be taking survivors to points south. Automotive travel quickly becomes impossible, so they turn to the means of transportation available to them: running.

However, in order to reach the boats for their Christmas Day departure, they will have to cover more than thirty miles a day! With no other choice, they start running. It's painful, especially at first, and they face challenges and perils along the way. Hydration and caloric intake is tough, not to mention murderous thugs and autocratic warlords.

Ed has a history of failure and self-doubt that only motivates to move forward, find his family, and redeem himself. Ed's advice, after the grueling journey, applies to recreation and competitive ultrarunners, people running for survival and family, and everyone who faces life's challenges: "You choose the right option. Then you repeat that choice a hundred thousand times. You don't run thirty miles; you run a single step many times over."

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The End of the World Running Club by Adrian Walker is a highly recommended post-apocalyptic thriller.

When an asteroid breaks apart showering meteors, destruction and doom onto Earth, Edgar Hill of Edinburgh, Scotland, must finally confront and face his responsibilities, or lack thereof, as a husband and father. Before the world ended, Edgar was an overweight, lazy, unhappy man, likely an alcoholic, who left most of the responsibilities and sacrifices of parenting young children up to his wife because, well, he was the one who worked. (Yeah, right.) When the world ends he realizes he needs to up his game, but is wholly unprepared to do so - until his wife and children are whisked away in a helicopter and he has to cross 450 miles of unknown chaos to try to reunite with them.

Edgar heads out traveling with a group of men and one soldier, a woman, from Edinburgh to Cornwall in hopes of finding his family and evacuating with them on the boats. The boats are rumored to be taking people from Cornwall and going south, to Australia, maybe, or South Africa, to safety and civilization. Along the way the group encounters violence and chaos. Edgar's endurance is tested once the group realizes that they must head south on foot and that to make it, they must run.

This is really more of an end-of-the-world novel than a running to survive novel. The running club doesn't actually start running until half way through the novel. Before you get to the running though, you see scenarios of how quickly the veneer of civilization falls away and lawlessness, chaos and bedlam take over. It's kind of standard fare for an end of the world novel, though, so it is also expected.

The End of the World Running Club is well written, with plenty of gripping action along with reprehensible scenes and despicable actions. It is an engrossing novel that will hold your attention to the end - as any good apocalyptic novel should. I really liked the novel. The problem is that I never grew to like Edgar. I felt like his family might be better off without him.

I also understand that he was written as a disagreeable character; Edgar tells us all his flaws and his feelings. He whines about his inadequacies as a man, husband, and father. He is expected to miss his family and, suddenly, he does after the world has ended and they have been taken away from him. Sometimes it's easy to say you want something or someone when they aren't there, in all their neediness, clinging, and crying. I get it, the running club is representative of Edgar's evolving and changing into the man he should have been. But... let me just say that the ending was pitch perfect for me.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author.

Edgar Hill is a “meh” father at best: he’s content to let his wife take care of the kids while he avoids responsibility and contemplates his dreary life. Until the sky begins to fall, and he only has a few hours to prepare. With a rain of asteroids imminent, Edgar is catapulted into motion, trying to scrape together everything he can to help save his family from the apocalypse. They are trapped in their basement for two weeks, and emerge into a world almost totally devastated.

With a few other survivors, they attempt to sort out their lives. When Edgar is out on a supply run one day, his family is rescued and taken all the way across the country in preparation for evacuation. Now he has only weeks to make it to them, with no vehicles, no supplies, and crazy, power-hungry scavengers who want to rule their own territories between him and his family. Running is the only answer. And Ed has never been much of a runner—more of a couch potato—so the lack of supplies isn’t even his biggest obstacle. Will his ragtag group make it to safety in time?

This novel mixes a dystopian, end-of-the-world feel with literary prose to achieve an adventure that focuses on the outer obstacles, but also a man’s struggles with his own inner ugliness. Ed isn’t a nice guy. He loves his family, but he’s kind of—okay, definitely is—a jerk. The end of the world doesn’t change that, but it does shake loose something in Ed and make him realize how precious his family is. Ed’s friend, Bryce, is a fantastic supporting character, injecting humor and attitude that Ed is decidedly lacking. This was a good read that gave me a bit to think about.

(Galley provided by Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I'm a sucker for end of the world types of novels & this one did not disappoint. While this book is far from perfect & had me scratching my head more often than not (especially during many of the running/walking scenes), the main character, Ed was unlike any I've read about so far in a book of this type. Personally, it really hit home for me, the reality of the man. The truth of it. Perhaps many readers hated him because he is so much like the average human. Edgar is in so many ways the disappointment many humans have become. It makes no difference that this occurs in England & I, a US born & raised woman, having never been to England can still see this weak character in many of the folks around me. Perhaps it is more realistic to me coming from a family of alcoholics, yet growing up to be free of alcoholism & starting my own small organic farm business because I wanted to get back to the land, back to the roots. Ironically even this is addressed in this novel. It too, hit home. The author does an amazing job at capturing what it is to be human, the good & the bad. The bad might be something we don't want to see in ourselves, but it is there, no matter how perfect we think we are. The end of times brings out our true character, it makes us see what really matters. Ed, despite his annoying pathetic character, is at heart a man who will do anything to get back to what matters to him, his family.

I enjoyed the atmosphere of the first few pages. I love apocalyptic lit. I was expecting "One Second After" or "The Road". Then I really got to know Ed.
Ed is the modern absent father. Ed that tried to stay as far removed from his family as possible emotionally. He becomes separated from his family by trying to distance himself from them. Ed that ran 500 miles (as far physically as emotionally now) because he thought that is what a dad is supposed to do.
I am uncertain as to what the running was to teach our characters. Some died or were just lost in the run and I did not miss them. It did remind me of "The Walk" by Goldberg only with running. This is not "The Stand" or "Alas, Babylon".
So, sure, end of world? Run Forrest
I did enjoy the writing for the most part. The expert turn of a phrase kept me reading.
Three for writing style

Okay, so based on the title, I didn't expect this to be as dark as it was. The title seems kind of light and quirky. It's a book club title.

The reality of the book is different.

This is grim.

The End of the World Running Club is a post-apoc novel that just gut wrenches you at every turn.

Add to that a main character you don't really like. Edgar starts this book as sort of a lazy man-child. He's got very little notion of what's important in this world. He's the kind of dad who insists on 'me' time instead of family time. And he's dreadfully smug about it.

Until he isn't.

As I joined Edgar on a journey that managed to be both terrifying and wonderfully transformative, I learned to sort of like him. I never loved him. But, oh I wanted him to find his family.

I didn't read The Martian. My own comparison would be to The Road. It's that dark and grim through much of the book and the author shows us some true rot at the heart of humanity.

Not a peaceful read, but a darned good one!

Before reading "The End of the World Running Club" I'd heard a few things about it, both good and bad, turns out that it gets points from me mostly for addictive quality and for its main character, Edgar, who seems to have divided opinion - but who I loved because he was so utterly whiny yet absolutely determined.

Poor Edgar. Really. He drinks a fair bit and is not that fit, he's not particularly happy with his lot in life, finding family life somewhat mundane. Cue fiery asteroids from outer space decimating the UK and elsewhere, enforcing upon him some kind of actual responsibility.

The beginning of this novel was superbly engrossing, as things go pear shaped in spectacular fashion, descriptively you are right in there with the desperate survivors, I read the first 25% of this novel in record time. Then things settle down somewhat with more introspection from Edgar when his family are swooped away and he has little time to do anything except, well, run after them.

Teaming up with a hotch potch of other survivors a kind of twisted type of road trip begins as Edgar attempts to catch up to his family before they are beyond his reach. Literally by running after them. Across destroyed landscape, facing down danger and erm ok he's still a bit whiny really. But it is SO ENGAGING. The rest of the story also encompasses a sort of coming of age for Edgar as he realises what is actually important, hey it doesnt matter how old you are you can still suddenly come into your own. I liked this aspect of the story very much.

As for Bryce well. I'm not even going to go into that, he was our light relief and our conscience in a lot of ways - definitely a character I'd like to know more about away from the rest. Little small request to the author there perhaps?

Overall I really enjoyed this one, I read it over 2 sittings whilst gulping down lots of cups of tea, it is one of those books that you just bang through because you have to know where the journey ends. I was rooting for Edgar and wanting to slap him for the majority of the time, equalling a recommended tag from me.

(Originally reviewed for Liz Loves Books with copy provided via Netgalley)

I have never suffered from claustrophobia, but after reading the start of this novel, I now have an understanding of that fear and a sense of what it must be like to feel trapped with no hope of escape. The fact that these opening scene's also include the main character's young family, make it that much more real and emotional.

This is the second novel I've read by Adrian J Walker and the second one I would highly recommend. The End of the World Running Club is a slick and addictive read. It begins with an emotional scene of devastation and then brings you along on a exhausting journey that continues to ramp up the tension with each passing day.

This is one of those books that stays with you during your working day. I found myself looking around the city during my daily commute, wondering how people would react to the type of chaos that occurs within this book. It makes you appreciate a quiet life.

Finally, I would recommend this book to those with young families. This book is about appreciating your family and the simple things in life. Once those are lost, it's about holding onto hope against all odds with the belief that you'll get those things back one day.

Another dystopian book this week for me!! Yay!!

This one takes place in England which was very different in that most that I've read were set in the United States. This end of the world scenario involves an asteroid strike that severely debilitates a lot of the planet with hundreds of them striking England.

Edgar Hill, hungover from the night before wakes up one morning to find that the Earth was informed that asteroids are hurling to the planet and there will be devastation of the extreme kind four hours before. He starts out behind the eight ball and basically strikes out, a lot!

At first I thought Edgar Hill a total loser, by the end of the book, I was cheering him on ecstatically.

I sped through this enjoyable read cheering Edgar on to the finish line.

Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

and Ed feels like running.

Man is at its very best when things are worst
Are we?
Mans inhumanity to man is more like it in this book.

A well written unique look at an apocalyptic event.

Ed an overweight middle age man living a middle class life with a wife 2 kids and a not so interesting job.
I got the feeling he was sitting in his cubicle looking for a way out of his personal hell.
Hey how about thousands of asteroids hitting Earth and laying waste to the planet. At least my life wont be so dull. Careful what you wish for.
Ed was a whiny, bloated, selfish man. Unfortunately it took armageddon to rain down on him to realize what was really important in life but was it it too late?

Good post apocalyptic reads
'Fever' by Deon Meyer
'Pandemic' by A.G. Riddle

I'm just reviewing the narration here.

The book is not my usual genre but quite compelling. I borrowed this from our great public library system and stayed up late for several nights because I couldn't stop listening. The narrator, Jot Davies, is the best I've ever heard. He does a fantastic job with characters and accents. I'm very picky about narration and frequently ditch something because I don't like the voice. Jot Davies could read a phone book and make it sound like it's shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Enjoyable dystopian novel where our hero Edgar is confronted with a world part destroyed by asteroids. His family become separated and he must make the long journey from Edinburgh to Falmouth by the only available mode, running. The story is full of sadness, and endeavour as Edgar tries to discover his inner self and realize, hopefully not too late, that when everything is stripped away what is left and what really is important is family.

The author regards Edgar's journey as an opportunity to question human ideals and to show the reader how survival can be possible when all human excess and comfort has been removed...."Perhaps there was a reason why we had filled our world with distraction after all. Perhaps there was a reason why we surrounded ourselves with plastic and light and excess. Perhaps our collective consciousness remembered all too well what it was like in darkness, surrounded by wet, rotten wood, mud, and nothing good to eat."

As a keen runner, I do understand the need to run, and so Edgar by this means of travel is not only able to discover and see the devastation left in the wake of the disaster but also banish inner demons and discover his inner self..."But there's nothing unusual about an old man who runs. He leaned in again. They're always out there, aren't they? Skinny bas%*&ds hobbling about in mangy shorts with their wee cocks flapping about inside."

There were occasion where I felt the writing was a little clichéd and the author was using the opportunity to preach the same old story of human greed and excess ..."This is how we all end up; running through our own wilderness, the landscape of disjointed events that form our lives, with nobody to make sense of it but ourselves. The road is ours and ours alone." However as a dystopian tale this was very enjoyable, and easy to read, if at times a little overrun (!) with quotes and the need for self discovery..."Most of the time we're just blind idiots seeking joy in a world full of fear and pain."

There's been a deluge of post-apocalyptic fiction lately, possibly in the wake of the success of games like Fall Out 3 and 4, and TV shows like the Walking Dead. Books in which something goes catastrophically wrong and everyday people have to do unspeakable things to survive. Featuring zombies, cannibals and worse, it's a genre that can tend to be quite samey-samey, except for a few surprisingly creative approaches like World War Z, The Girl With All The Gifts and The Road. So, a man named Walker has written a book about runners, and it falls into this category too. I was hesitant to start, worried that it would be another retelling of the same old story; nothing new. I was wrong.

It's hard being a human. Most of the time we're just blind idiots seeking joy in a world full of fear and pain. We have no idea what we're doing and on the rare occasions when we get things right, we're just lucky. Our lives are filled with the humdrum, dust and noise with no meaning. And yet they contain moments that seem to mean something, something we can't describe but want to. Those moments leave holes that we want to fill.

Ed Hill is a flabby, reluctant father with a boring life, until hundreds of asteroids wipe out western civilisation as we know it. Separated from his family, he has to race across the UK to find them before they disappear forever. If he makes it that far, that is...
You don't run thirty miles, you run a single step many times over. That's all running is; that's all anything is. If there's somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that's all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don't have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you've come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what's in front of you and how you're going to move it behind you.

My first impression was pretty positive: I like Ed. I like his snark, his bitterness, his self-deprecating humour. I like Bryce more. I like that the story is set in Edinburgh rather than North America, and I like that Ed is a completely average person. Reading this book might have made me work out just a little bit harder than usual, in solidarity. It's an apocalypse story without all the silliness that usually makes them require a large helping of suspension of disbelief: aliens didn't throw rocks at the Earth, the dead stay dead, and there's nothing too woo-woo that can't be explained by science (and dehydration). It's a straight-forward tale told in down-to-earth words.

My eyes were drawn to the water lapping around the edges of the city, out of place and unsure of itself against its new shore. I saw tiny white specks, gulls moving around on the waves and flapping clumsily up onto high window ledges, the urban cliffs in which they were now making nests. An erosion was beginning, which, I imagined, would result in a beach after enough time. The sand would be made of bones, credit cards, fridges, cars and sofa springs. Dunes would form and grow tufts of grass. The sun might eventually shine on them, a young boy might tumble down them, laughing, rolling in the trillion, trillion fragments of debris and detritus, dust ground from the lives who had once walked the bed of the rolling ocean into which he crashed. The living would run through the dust of the dead, just as they always had done.

While there are some stunning descriptive passages like the one above, and some powerful musings on the meaning of life, family and how Ed's mentality changes as he becomes better at running, I felt disconnected from it, in some ways. Sometimes I was fully absorbed, but sometimes the pace would slow to a bit too much of a halt or my mind would start to wander a little. I didn't find the other characters particularly interesting and Ed's detachment from them meant that I struggled to connect with (and care) about them. I feel like this would make an excellent movie, and perhaps the movie might be better than the book. I did find the book thought-provoking and inspiring. However, I feel like it lost its way towards the end, with a strange, rambling hallucinatory sequence that didn't make much impact and a very unsatisfying ending.

That other beast inside you, the one you rarely see? You have it tethered tight. It watches and waits while you mess up your life, fill your body with poison and muddy your mind with worry. For some it takes just one call to free it. For others it takes 500 miles of agony.

For those who like survival stories with gore, the raw humanity of society without rules or order, and especially those who like to run, this is a great book. It is exciting and entertaining, most of the time. For me, I guess I wanted something a little more; it's different from a lot of books in the genre and I liked its originality. Character- and plot-wise it wasn't quite perfect, but I still enjoyed it.

Poor Edgar, he's not having a great post apocalyptic experience and I loved every minute of his trials and the heroic effort it required to get him back into the arms of his family.

We meet some great characters along the way, some of them were scary, some of them I loved, all were so well written that I could see them in my minds eye and feel what they were feeling. The countryside and the devastation of the event were characters in themselves, and I could easily envision what Edgar was having to live in and live through. The opening chapters were so vivid that months later I am still seeing them and cringing.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of post apocalyptic fiction that is very well written, highly entertaining and will have you so grateful to wake up in your own bed and not in Edgar's world at the end of the book. I loved every page! What a fabulous read.

At first this book confused me, because while there was the end of the world, there was no running. But then, at about 50%, the running started.

As an apocalyptic story it's very good, with a type of apocalypse that doesn't often show up and a moderately unlikeable hero. I liked his determination, and being in his head as his mental state deteriorated was unsettling. Now, I must go and stock up some water and canned food...

I received an ARC which did not affect my review in any way.

Bottom line: I could not put this book down! The title interested me right away, and I had this idea of a dark humor/end of the world book similar to the movie Zombieland. Well, let's just say there is very little humor and a lot of dark. When I first started reading I was actually a little turned off by how dark it was but then I just HAD to know what happened next. As a mom of young kids there were parts that hit home and were a little hard to read. Regardless, I feel like I absolutely devoured this book and now that I've just finished I have that dizzying book hangover, where you don't even know what to read next but you know you'll somehow be disappointed by it. A truly great read, with original writing. A story and wonderful characters that will definitely stick with you. Mr. Walker, a sequel??? Pretty please??

Had great potential but the author never dove deep enough into any aspect of the story. Characters, plot, etc were all adequately developed but none were ever explored enough to make a ‘wow’ moment. All the story twists and scenes have been played out before in other end of the world books and are easy to see coming and if you read the genre you know how they’ll end. While all the above sounds negative it should not discourage you from reading the book. It moves along and reads easy. If I could rate 3.5 stars I would as it is a somewhat above average read.

Good read, well written and sometimes brutal. The science is sketchy, but that's okay. We don't really need the intricate details. We just know that something happened (no spoiler) that disrupted Edgar Hill's civilization. The story is about how an average guy keeps his family safe and how he survives and tries to rejoin them. Edgar is believable and likable. I kept rooting for him. Some surprises. It will make a thrilling movie.

If you start the book expecting the main character to already be running, you are going to be disappointed.
It starts very differently from that and at first I wasn't sure that I was reading the right book.
But as you get further into the story the beginning makes sense and the character finally starts running.
This was a tale of human strength, endurance, and courage. And I really can't say much more than that
without getting into spoilers, but it certainly is worth the time it takes to read it.
In fact if you pass this one by, you might be sorry that you missed it. It was very good.

Recommended

I am stunned. I read the last page, closed the book and thought. I waited 10 minutes. Then I opened it again and re-read the final two chapters.

I am wrenched by the ending. I am not saying the ending was horrid and sorrowful, but you feel it deep in your heart and soul.

This is one of those books that you shut after the last page and just stare at it for a few minutes.... thinking. In some spots I know I read too fast, missing things in my need to know what happens next. This book was so damned good that I may very well simply open to page one and read it again, immediately.

Remember a few weeks ago I told you that I had just read THE book of the year for me? Well now I have two of those books. Both equal in brilliance and character build - but totally diverse from each other. So far it's been a banner summer for my reading. How often do you find The Book? I have found more than one.

This is not an apocalyptic book with a survival need to run as advertised on the front cover, but instead a book about retaining your humanity, keeping what is most important to you safe and whole, finding just what you are truly made of and what is the most important thing to you. This is about taking your stand against what life throws your way and striving for more than just surviving. It is not a typical apocalypse book.

Adrian's writing has a wonderful flow and phrasing to it, the descriptives flow into your mind and you can clearly picture the thoughts and emotions occurring in each scene. Quite a few sentences invite you to back up a paragraph or two and reread, which I did willingly.

Edgar is a man who is unhappy with life. He is 35 with 2 young children, stuck in the middle class suburban rut that so many of us fear. He is slightly overweight and drinks a bit too much each evening. His marriage is "okay". Then an apocalyptic event does happens, one that could easily be based on reality. Suddenly Edgar is not simply providing for his family, he has to protect them and help them actually SURVIVE. His reality changes in an instant, and he finds sources of strength and determination he didn't know existed in him. He becomes a hero to them without thought, almost against his will.

When his family is suddenly wrenched away from him and he finds himself left behind he looks to the others also left and they take on a journey to reunite and find a safe spot in the world. They form the End of the World Running Club to travel 500 odd miles to the safety zone. They form bonds and friendships and competitions. They retain their humanity with each other, sometimes filling their nights with petty sniping, but always staying together as a team.... a family made from need.

The characters in this novel are living, breathing beings, simply trapped on paper. They are fully alive. No cardboard characters in this novel. The conditions they travel over and the other survivalists they meet are at times truly horrific, but through it all the light of humanity shines. They fight to have it shine.

I cannot say enough about this book. It is truly a MUST READ. Please note that this is through a UK publisher and cannot be purchased as an eBook here in the US. Print copy only at this time. But you WANT this book on your bookcase.

No one ask to borrow my copy, you don't have a chance of getting your hands on it.

This was a great book to read while I'm working on walking. It tells the story of Edgar Hill, an overweight 35 year old father of two living with his wife in a new house in Scotland. He drinks too much, he's not the best dad in the world, and he kind of hates his job, and on top of all of that the apocalypse arrives. The United Kingdom is devastated, and even though Ed and his family survive, he quickly loses them when a rescue chopper evacuates them while he's out foraging for food. His family has been taken to evacuation ships that are leaving in a month, and Ed has no choice but to follow if he's ever going to see them again. Falling in with a random collection of survivors, Ed and his companions must travel the length of a devastated Great Britain before the boats leave, while trying to find food, shelter, and fighting for survival against the remains of society. On top of all of that, Ed has to wage war with himself, with his poor fitness and health, with the mistakes of his past that continue to haunt him, and with maintaining the will and the drive to survive.

I don't know if Adrian Walker is a distance runner, but he writes like one. As a person who is currently on my own quest for fitness, the entire book really resonated with me, including the realistic ending that everyone may not like. There are parts of this book that are really bleak (if you're a realist, then humanity behaves exactly the way you expect them to behave after a disaster), but overall it's very hopeful, and I enjoyed it.

I'm a fan of disaster/end-of-the-world novels and, in my experience, finding profound depth alongside entertaining writing in this genre is rare. This is an apocalypse tale that went beyond the vicarious thrill of survival to touch my heart and actually give inspiration that I feel like I can apply to my own not-so-exciting everyday life. Like The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I felt like the story said something about the human condition, but unlike that bleak novel, I was left with feelings of hope and general fondness for humanity instead of despair for our species and existence in general.

End of the World RC has so much going for it. It has the horror of the end of the world, but some of the humor of a light-hearted road story. It had characters that I grew genuinely fond of, and the writer's keen observations had me highlighting passages in my Kindle as I have rarely done in any fiction novel. One theme of the story is how a person accomplishes the impossible when called upon to do so and these passages were particularly motivating to me.

One of my favorite passages takes place around the beginning of the tale. Several men are up late at night, drinking together and talking about the things taking place in this bleak new world. The main character is holding his baby boy and, in the midst of their serious conversation, the baby farts. One of the men comments that is the smartest thing heard all evening and they laugh. The narrator observes that it is hard not to (laugh) when a baby farts and an old man smiles. On the face of it, there is nothing terribly profound in this scene, just a few men commiserating over the end of the world and laughing at a fart joke. But I think that is exactly why I love this book so much. That even as destruction and death surround them, people can share a smile and a laugh at such a small silly thing, it gives me hope and that is what seems profound to me. The whole book had that tone for me.

Most of the population is dead following "the event" but Ed and his wife and two children are miraculously alive. How will these comfortably middle class suburban Scotts survive without stores, electricity and cell phones? Ed lacks basic mechanical skill, much less survival skills or athletic ability. Feeling guilty that he didn't recognize the warnings preceding the "event" Ed struggles to accommodate the new circumstances of life in a hostile and primitive world.
The family is rescued from their basement shelter, and they join other survivors at a regional military base. Piecing together the extent of the devastation the group struggles to overcome physical, psychological, and personality challenges to form a plan for long-term survival.
Who is trustworthy? Should they stay and hope for order to be restored? Is any government intact? Food is scarce. Skirmishes for territory and resources result in the military recruiting the civilians in their care to scavenge outside their fences. Ed returns from one such mission to discover that most of the base, including his wife and children, has been evacuated to the coast, 300 miles away.
Paunchy Ed, elderly Harvey, three soldiers, Richard whose son was also evacuated, and the motorcycle thug form an unlikely group who set out to join the others on the coast.

We read this in our U3A reading group (that is University of the Third Age, if you did not know!) mostly out of curiosity, as post- apocalyptic sci-fi is not our regular genre, and each of us enjoyed and found a lot to say about it. We felt the overall message was of self- discovery, a journey to a better, stronger self,as Ed prioritises his journey to find his family over all else. The reader shares the growth and survival of the narrator, whose voice changes from that of a typical lowland Scots male, almost a caricature, to that of a philosopher , as he prepares for the final leg of his journey in a rickety boat he does not even know will float.
The Ed in the beginning is a sad figure, who can see himself as he is and does not like what he sees; certainly the reader is not meant to admire him, yet as we follow him and his utter determination to succeed, we do come to wish for him to once again share the tin can phone with his daughter. The introspective passages are almost lyrically written and reveal an intelligent and thoughtfully emotional growth of character.
Ed's companions are strongly drawn, and become his guardian angels, in an almost Bunyanesque Progress, in which he is hurt, battered and broken yet fights to the very end.
We are left, in time- honoured literary style, having come full circle, screaming at the sun, not sure of what to believe but knowing he has to keep moving as his journey is not yet complete.
This is a masterful piece of writing, which left each of us more than pleased we had tackled a novel so different from our usual library- recommended reading. I for one will follow Adrian J Waker's career in the future.

I struggled at first reading this book. I tend to prefer lighter fare, however, this was a good book. I started to write enjoyable but that description seemed inappropriate since it was about the end of the world. Ed, the main protagonist of the book, really grew on me. At first, there was little to like about him but as he grappled with survival and finding his family.... well he became a more complex character that I found myself rooting for.

You know how a lot of books lately come in 10 different parts? Well, not this one. This one is complete. An actual novel. Don't get me wrong, there is the potential to explore these characters further, however, this book stands on it's own.
Well written, well edited, characters I cared about....nicely done. Will read the next book Mr. Walker puts out. I am just about to start reading his short story, From the Storm. Refreshing to find this author.

I don't really do running clubs. I run as I dream—alone. But if I did join a club, it would certainly be to run through a post-apocalyptic wasteland with some new found mates, trying to reach my family before they shipped off forever. This is part of the scenario in the book, “The End of the World Running Club," a novel by Adrian Walker. The novel is a wonderful, harrowing, epic, witty, and emotional story of the apocalypse and one man’s attempt to be the father he wanted to be after the world ends.

I almost cried at the end of this book. Well, I did cry, but nobody saw. If a tear falls in the forest….

The main character, Edgar, is a more than a tad lazy, not a terrible man, but on a scale of 1 to 10 his parenting efforts stop at a 6. One morning after a bit too much to drink, the apocalypse starts to rain down, and he is forced to rise to the occasion. It’s time to bunker down. Throughout his adventures, he encounters others who are doing their best to survive, and of course many who have turned savage. Sometimes there is a great notion in the moral decay, but often there are hidden and deadly motives. I couldn’t help but imagine the cast of The Walking Dead in comparison journeying through this land. In other ways, this is a UK version of “The Road." It is told with a dry wit, more stoic, almost darkly comedic at times. The philosophical interludes of the main character reflecting on the human condition were told with such unique insight I could have listened all day.

This book is probably 75 percent apocalyptic story, and 25% running tale, but there is endurance and perseverance inherent in every move. You’ll spend time trapped in a cellar gasping for air and water and smelling the stink of your own body. You’ll spend time in ravaged cities with scavengers and in military bases trying to salvage something out of the wreckage. But you’ll also find great passages of running, most of which focused on the mental aspect of running. You’ll want to meet Jesus, you’ll want to holler at the rising sun, and you may highlight a ton of passages on your kindle, like I did. Take this one for example:

“That other beast inside you, the one your rarely see? You have it tethered tight. It watches and waits while you mess up your life, fill your body with poison and muddy your mind with worry. For some it takes just one call to free it. For others it takes five hundred miles of agony. But mine was free now, for the first time since I was a boy, running with a grin like a wolf through moonlit bracken. Pain ran alongside me, kindred and beautiful and grinning my grin. I’ll always be here, it said. Always, but now we’re friends.”

Any club that helps a runner make a friend of the pain and sets their beast free is right on. Grabbed this book on Kindle Unlimited, and am so glad I did.

This book....wow. Brilliantly written, and it really does take the reader through the full gamut of emotions. I could not put it down. Seriously, I stayed up until 3 in the morning for a few nights in a row just to finish it, and when I got to that last page I felt euphoric and emotionally exhausted. As though I'd run all those miles and endured those psychological and physical tests right along with Ed. This book will suck you in if you let it. I was saddened, horrified, elated, sickened, delighted, hopeful, crushed, and then hopeful again. The ending came as a total surprise, but after I thought about it a little, I realized how absolutely perfect it was. I am hoping...PRAYING for a sequel! This author has my full attention. Well done!!

Post-apocalyptic love story of a man and the family he didn't realize how much he loved until he lost them...or did he? The book had me hooked from Chapter 1, which is unusual. Then it picks up speed from there. Very well written. It's also timely with all of the natural disasters we've seen recently. Many of us wonder how we would respond if we were in survival mode.

A post apocalypse novel invested with long meandering discourses on the meaning of life, love, fatherhood, death, and all the Big Questions. A lot of existential and metaphysical philosophy that bogged the story into a run through quicksand with lead weights. Add into that people doing naive and stupid things and you have the gist of this book .

All I knew going into this was it was about the apocalypse and about running. I hoped it would also be about an epic striving toward a goal through the worst that could happen. I love stories like that, whether it's in movies (The Last of The Mohicans) or television (Lost or The Walking Dead) or books (Les Miserables or The Road or even New Moon). I wasn't disappointed. I found myself immersed in this heroic yet very human journey of survival. Being pulled so completely out of my own world of day to day routine is the best kind of reading. There's some cool stuff about running too--what it feels like and how to keep going when you think you can't. Well done and highly recommended!

I loved this book so much. I got it on a BookBub a while back and it kept getting pushed to the bottom of the TBR pile. When I finally got to it, I was mad at myself for waiting. Fast and fun and funny. The writing is crisp and real, making it very easy to connect with Edgar immediately. Highly recommend!

No spoiler alerts, it is a post apocalyptic story after all. I thought I wouldn’t like it, I don’t like dark, depressing stories, but this wasn’t. There was one bit I had to fast forward through, it was a bit dark, but other than that I really enjoyed this book.

I was pleasantly surprised by this story. It's well written, well edited and has a well thought out and coherent story line. The characters are believable and likable, and there's enough uncertainty that they were not always predictable - and that kept the characters and story interesting. The story focuses more on the characters than on the disaster or the mechanics of what happened. The main character, Ed, grew throughout the story and ultimately experienced an epiphany that made him whole. This was a case of someone that needed to be lost to find himself. Another interesting aspect of the story was the location. My parents are from Great Britain, so I recognized the references that some American readers might have missed, but I think this story is worth reading even if you're not familiar with that culture.

This had been one of those novels that kept coming up in the recommended list on the store and I finally bit the bullet. Have to say it is every bit as good as the recommendations. An apocalyptic novel with some fine writing which grabs you from the start and keeps you engrossed, focussing on Edgar Hill and his emotions, throughout his attempt to get to Cornwall from Edinburgh. Great stuff.

Ray Smillie

This was an interesting concept, but the execution was not all that special. There were several sections where very little happened and it felt like the story dragged on. The ending was also a bit odd, but it wasn't a terrible story overall.

I just finished this book and just... wow! I didn't want it to end. The characters are engaging though our "hero" is a mess, he's so incredibly human and his growth through the book is both inspired and heartbreaking.

My own published story 'The Quiet Government Men' follows this apocalyptic / family separation / coping in a hostile new world scenario and I was eager to see how another writer had dealt with it. Very well I must say. I did not admire the lead character - was I meant to? - but the writer tackles this by involving him with characters I could relate to. I found the 'need to move', rather than stay put in the disaster nightmare, made for the story so he got that right. It is not good to be too critical of detail because I could see the need to tell the story and move on and I think it helped to inject some crazy surrealism into the journey. Running from Edinburgh to Bristol is not something I'd imagine I'd succeed at nor would many unfit modern western people and I was interested to wonder if the writer knew about the details of long distance slogging or yomping and its effect on the mind. I did get to a stage of knowing he'd make the distance if only because the book would be a waste of a story if he didn't. I think this should be required reading for people who live a cosy life unaware it could go oh so wrong without warning and let them ponder their own reaction to such a state of affairs. Thought provoking and, from my point of view, very well written both technically as well as the writer did not intrude other than, as writers know, we must write about what we know.

First the good: the writing is excellent and the characters are realistically diverse. I was interested enough by the world and the characters that I finished the novel. Now the bad: maybe it was just me, but the writing style seemed somehow distant and none of the characters really grabbed me. I also found the pacing rather slow overall, with very little excitement. I think the author was more interested in his theme and messages than with the setting or adventures in his story. Others may find it meaningful, but I was in the mood for more excitement this time out.

I really enjoyed this book and how it was structured. A refreshing take on how the end of the world might look; no zombies or wandering murderous plants here just the pure determination of a man searching for his family in a post apocalyptic world.

I was all prepared for an action/adventure book, full of SHTF struggle and triumph. Well, I got that (sort of), but mostly I got beautifully written story about a man who discovers his love of life, no matter what it throws at him.

This author does a great job of creating really fun characters and then weaving them into an exciting plot. I'll be looking for more.

My favorite part? "Life never stops screaming at you. Sometimes you have to scream back."

Easily the best self-pubbed book I've read after Wool and The Martian. A great opening that grabs you by the seat of your pants and makes you feel like you're really there. A terrific main character who goes on a satisfying emotional journey that had an ending that was both satisfying and and bittersweet. A post apocalyptic world that's both familiar and different. Highly recommend this for anyone interested in PA fiction.

I have never posted a book review before but I just had to for The End of the World Running Club. This book never lagged for me. The story was riveting and the characters were all engaging. The reference to Soundgarden’s Searching With My Good Eye Closed at the end of the book was the cherry on top! Don’t hesitate! Read this book! Even Stephen King recommended it!

This started off really strong and there were many parts throughout that were memorable. It sort of ran off a cliff at the end (hehe) and had a somewhat strange ending (though it didn't put me off entirely). There were a few parts that had me scratching my head, but the dialogue between the main characters was really well done.

It was a bit difficult to relate since (I think) it was situated in the UK primarily, which is great for people from that region but I was frequently lost on locales and such.

When I came across this book I was delighted, being a science fiction avid reader and a long distance runner; now that I read it I highly recommend it! One get to love the livid characters and to get resilient with them through their plight throught Uk. I do expect that this book gets all the credit it deserves. Awesome reading with a nice touch of british english for good measure!

Unusual and exciting post apocalyptic novel. The writing is solid all the way through. The story is unpredictable and the action just rolls along. First class story. My only regret was having started it late in the day and finding it nearly impossible to put down and go to sleep.

The simplest of plots, supported with exceptional character development and interspersed with absolutely wonderful descriptions of the inner thoughts and hard-earned wisdom of the protagonist...I am not one to mark passages, but I marked at least a dozen in this sensitive and insightful book.

Great overall story. Character development at least for me, in the beginning was not strong enough, so it was hard to really visualize the characters until half way through the book. Vivid descriptions of the journey were extremely well done.

Amazing. Written skillfully and artfully with a depth of feeling lacking in a great many post-apocolytic novels. I listened to the audio version, read by Jot Davies, who brought the story to life with his passionate performance.

Well written tale of a family’s survival in a post-apocalyptic world. If you are a runner, you will definitely relate to the main character’s love/hate relationship to running. An enjoyable read.