The ultimate race against time post-apocalyptic thriller

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.