Wednesday 20 August 2014

PRE-RELEASE REVIEW: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is a dystopian novel in which a pandemic occurs wiping out 99% of the world population. The book focuses on a few people different lives before and after the pandemic. These people are all connected by actor Arthur Leander. We discover the difficulties of surviving after the pandemic in a world where there is not even electricity or phones and when cults start to appear.

Photo taken from Goodreads


The opening chapter really excited me. The opening scene took place during a play of King Lear and well I don't want to spoil it, so all I will say it's a very dramatic opening scene and that really made me start reading more.

I won't lie though, I really didn't like this book for a good maybe 50 pages or something. I thought it was going to be one of those books that I couldn't even get through but I'm not one to give up on a book and I'm glad I didn't. I think I had trouble with the book because it's different to my usual reads.

I was amazed by how well Mandel connected everything together. All the characters were connected in different ways and I found that amazing, particularly they were all connected by Arthur Leander. I adore an author who can do such complex things with their writing like managing to connect people just as Mandel did. It wasn't even just simple connections, some of the connections we didn't find out for so long but then things just clicked and unravelled..

At first I found the mixture of going from the past and future very frustrating, but this just took some time getting used to and was a really great way for the author to tell the story! Mandel really pulled that off well.

I liked the book because you don't get to the end and everything is resolved, life is back to normal. There was just a hint of hope and I really liked that. I was so impressed by this book. Receiving it, I had never heard of the author or the book and I really didn't know what to think especially because it's probably not the type of book I'd choose. I really hope this book does well!

Characters
One thing that kept playing on my mind through the book was where's Jeevan? It was driving me crazy. I really wanted to know more about him and what he was doing and unfortunately he wasn't mentioned as much in the book as I would have liked. I feel I just instantly liked his character from the very beginning at the theatre. It was so good how Arthur was kind of in the centre of it all, with everyone connected around him. I ended up loving Kirsten however she seemed to be the only member of the travelling symphony who I really had some kind of vested interest in.. but I did really care what happened to her!

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Station Eleven releases on 10th September (UK)

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