Book #32 of 2022: A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World | 3 DNF books

[thistlechaser]

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher. It's not often a book makes me go "Oh my god, this book!", but this was one of them. It was so good, I carved out so much extra time to read. Hours yesterday and while I never take a lunch break (since I work from home), today I did so I could finish it. I hate to be done with the story, but I just had to see how it ended.

The plot sounds straightforward and simple: The world ended -- something happened, almost no one could have babies anymore, birthrate went down to a sliver of what it had been, the Earth became empty of humans, and the last few people were living in what remained.

The plot opened on an island where a small family lived with their two dogs. (Dog litters were uncommon and the pups were almost always male, so dogs were nearly as rare as people.) A trader sails to the island, and flees in the night with one of the dogs (the female one).

The whole story is about one young boy who was trying to hunt down the trader and get his other dog back. He loved his dogs so much, he raced off to save her without planning, taking supplies, or anything.

It seems like such a simple plot, but the story was being told by the main character in the future writing it all out in a book, talking to his future reader who likely would never exist. So not only did he write to "you" the reader a lot, but since the MC was writing about his story after it happened, there was so much foreshadowing and the tension was so high through the whole thing without it feeling artificial at all.

If I had to criticize something, it would be an element of the ending. The whole story was so realistic and believable, I didn't really buy that one element (a modern day religion) could still exist generations after civilization fell and with so few people left.

But all in all, this was such a good book. Best book I've read in a long time.

50) Red Wolf by Jennifer Dance. It's not you, book, it's me. I'm sure this was a fine book (it won awards), but it was a too realistic tale of native american boys who were being converted into "proper" white men. The opening scene was a wolf being shot, the next scene was a young boy tied to a pole and whipped until he was bloody. Just not what I was looking to read during my relaxing time.

51) Red Moon Rising by Peter Moore. A story about a half-"vampyre", half-"wulf" (half vampire, half werewolf) teenager in a supernatural high school. Even if I had enjoyed the story (which I very much did not), the special spelling of words in this story would have been enough to drive me up a wall.

52) Archipelago by Andrew Leon Hudson, Kurt Hunt, and Charlotte Ashley. These three authors each wrote their own book, then wove them together. Sounds like an interesting idea, right? At least one of the authors needed an editor badly, and the second one's writing put me to sleep (literally), so I didn't even bother continuing on to the third author's section.

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Ooo, I've had Boy and His Dog at the End of the World on my TBR list- sounds like it's worth it. And I might look into Red Wolf, but with some trepidation. Appreciating that one might depend on my mood.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! I hope you're able to find it and enjoy it! And yeah, if you're in the right mood for it, or if you want to learn about that time period, Red Wolf might work for you. I don't mind if a fiction book is heavy, but rarely do I want to read nonfiction or fiction based on reality when it involves such dark themes.