Pros
- Writing style is casual and easy to read
- Some interesting twists on what would otherwise be a fairly standard post-apocalyptic story
- Engaging and likable characters with backgrounds explored
Cons
- Slow start and fast ending, leaving a sense of imbalance between start and end of story
- Conclusion is a bit unsatisfactory
The Apocalypse Seven Review
The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette adds some science fiction flair to an otherwise regular post-apocalyptic story that involves the usual elements of foraging for food, surviving the wasteland, and finding shelter.
When those three essentials are met, the seven survivors must then determine the reason for their existence in a world where everyone else is gone. This mystery alone—why the seven survived while the rest of the world has disappeared—carries the story and keeps readers interested and engaged in the answer.
Readers who like post-apocalyptic stories or even apocalyptic stories have certain expectations about the books they read. The result is that there isn’t much variation in terms of the telling of the story. Characters go about in various ways to fulfill Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and they encounter obstacles toward that fulfillment. These obstacles materialize through dangerous creatures, inclement weather, and a lack of food.
But The Apocalypse Seven does away with the more mundane task of having to find food and water. In their futures, the seven are still able to locate dense nutritional bars and, strangely enough, clean running water through whatever remains of the infrastructure.
The presence of food and water frees characters to search for the reason of their survival. And this allows readers to learn about each character’s background, making them more relatable and endearing.
One nice quality about the book is that there is that the world the seven survivors find themselves in is plentiful. That means no brutal survival world like in The Walking Dead, where the remnants of humanity are forced to to cruelty among other survivors in order to live, which can be both oppressive and depressive in the long term.
The answer itself is a bit surprising, and once that answer is revealed, the rest of the story moves quickly toward its resolution, giving the entire book a sense of imbalance due to the slow build-up and the quick conclusion.
The conclusion itself feels a bit lacking and unsatisfying in that reason for the seven’s survival isn’t really dealt with. In fact, the reason for the apocalypse is itself trivializes the human species and almost makes the seven’s struggle to exist, and by extension humanity’s struggle against extinction, trivial.
The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette is a fun apocalyptic story with a fun mystery and a science fiction quality that will engage and interest readers. While the conclusion leaves a lot to be desired, the potential exists in a sequel to expand upon and more fully address the lingering questions left at the end.
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