Gene Doucette

I like a good end-of-the-world tale from time to time, and The Apocalypse Seven satisfied my craving for the most part. I liked learning all the individual personalities and watching this disparate group of characters come together. The compelling problem of survival in a world with no electricity where wolves actively hunt humans was dealt with realistically, too.

The biggest question in the book is what in the world happened, and even while I was enjoying the characters and watching their fight for survival, my mind was clicking away, trying to figure out what caused it all. And... therein lies a problem. I didn't buy the author's explanation for the cause of the whateverpocalypse; however, it wasn't enough to ruin the book for me. Gene Doucette's mind works in interesting ways, and I think I'll take a look to see what else he's written.… (more)

4,25 stars

There are two possibilities: either I'm rating the books I'm reading way too high at the moment, or my book year just happened to get off to a really good start. Either way, I found this a very enjoyable read. And unexpectedly funny. I think it may have been a really good idea to listen to this in audiobook format, because I don't think my inner narrator would have done anywhere near as good a job as Steve Carlson in capturing the voices of all the characters.

As a story, this was a pretty light one, as YA books often tend to be. Often, I found myself thinking about what the current scene would have looked like in movie format, and the humor of the sixteen-year-old Annie Collins was right up my alley (so I'm juvenile, sue me). There might have been a slight Juno-effect in that Annie wasn't entirely believable as a sixteen-year-old, especially in relation to adults in the book. The again, this was a book about a spaceship landing in a small town in the United States, so I guess realism wasn't really the main goal of the story to begin with.… (more)