One day, without little previous notice, a horrible illness sweeps off 99% of the world’s population. The survivors try to group and go on in a planet that’s crumbled: no electricity, no internet (THE HORROR), nothing at all. The media and all the communications are down, as the people who worked there died as well. The world plunges into chaos.

That’s how Station Eleven begins. With some sort of flu (from Eastern Europe… I bet there’s a political reading we could do of that fact) killing almost everyone in a very short period of time, and destroys the world as we know it. The writing takes us from character to character, as the plague begins. They have different ages, sexes and races (as far as I can tell); but they are all linked by an actor (the first person to die in the novel), called Arthur Leander.

The novel then jumps to several years in the future. We meet again several of the characters that were presented on the onset of the Georgia Flu (as the disease is known). Living in a post apocalyptic wasteland (ok, not exactly a wasteland), they are, obviously, tougher and hardened against the pains of life.

My favorite was Kirsten, who is a child actor in the first part. I’m a sucker for kickass female characters and she was awesome. It also helps that she’s a Shakespearian actress (of course the Bard survives). She is a member of an artistic troupe, who perform Shakespeare and play music in the different places they get to.

Because humans are humans, there’s also a lot of crazy people around. Kirsten’s group arrive at a place where a new religious leader has decided to stay. The problem starts when a girl (supposedly betrothed to this guy) sneaks with the troupe. The crazy sect begins hunting the group and they’re separated.

While relatively short, the novel is very exciting. The pace is agile and keeps the plot moving (yaaay), so it was a good book to begin my year with. I particularly liked the shifting focus, as it gave different faces to the tragedy the characters just went through. I already talked about Kirsten, but I enjoyed other characters as much as I did her. Jeevan and Clark, for instance, are survivors. Clark was a good example of a gay character whose arc wasn’t angsting over his orientation. His conflict was related to memory and loss, which are probably the most important topics here. And he’s the one who embodies them the most (in my humble opinion). He becomes a sort of leader for one of the settlements, and he begins a museum of the past in an airport.

There’s so many things to love about this book: beautiful writing, great storytelling and relevant themes. I should probably write a paper about this, so I can geek more about it. But please not that this book is closer to McCarthy’s The Road than to any YA dystopia (though a lot less depressing).