I originally thought I would rate this book 3 stars, but after some consideration, I decided to knock it down to 2 stars. I think I gave too much weight to the premise of the book, which is one that really interests me. I love that this book explores the human need to create and share art even in the apocalypse. I find it a fresh take on post-apocalyptic media, as I certainly have never seen a story like it before. Survival is insufficient. But that initial idea is not enough to make the overall product enjoyable. However, the thing that's keeping the rating from going even lower is the prose. The prose is spectacular—the author truly has a way with words. I particularly liked the "No more" sequences early on in the book and I wish they had stuck around.

The first two sections of the book were incredibly strong—if the story continued to be that strong, this book could have easily gotten 5 stars from me. But very quickly after that, we dive into the past and stay there. I am sorry, but there is no reason we needed

to know every detail of Arthur and Miranda's lives, marriage, and eventual divorce. It was completely irrelevant to the story

. Ninety percent of the sections we read about the past could (should) have been cut out and the story would have improved because of it.

I also felt like everything was simultaneously too close to the end of the world and too far. For example, in the book, dogs are described as wolfish or muttish and the younger members of society don't recognize dog breeds like Pomeranians, but it's only been twenty years since the fall of civilization so it's not like dog breeds would have disappeared in that short amount of time. But then you still have things like people living in the shell of a Wendy's twenty years on, which seems so unrealistic. If one "town" was described this way, I might be able to accept it, but that's not the case—no, in fact, this is described as normal by the members of The Symphony. Why wouldn't people move into houses, or even try to construct their own? Especially after twenty years?

Why did it take the people in the Severn City Airport two years to make, at the very least, tents to sleep in?

Not to mention, the collapse of civilization itself is written weirdly in this book. I don't know how to describe it, but it feels like the author retcons it several times as she keeps going back to the past.

One thing that springs to mind is Miranda being unable to get a flight out of Malaysia when she finds out that Arthur has died. She finds out he died the next morning, basically, and the narrative says that the airports are already closed by the time she gets back to the hotel. But then when we learn about how Clark got stranded where he did, he was taking a flight to Arthur's funeral, which is a day or two after he informed Miranda of Arthur's death... so airports were still open. Then you have parts of the narrative that say people stayed on the internet until it blinked out, but then in Clark's later sections, you see that people couldn't access the internet even the first day or two after they were grounded.

I feel like these issues were exacerbated by the nonlinear narrative.

I am not a person who hates disjointed narratives—in fact, I quite like them when they are done well—but in this case, I think this style of narrative really hindered the story. If I had to pinpoint why, it would be because everything is too cleanly linked.

The twist was way too easy to guess. I called that Tyler was The Prophet in part three when we were getting Miranda's backstory, that's how easy it was.

It doesn't help that Station Eleven (the comic) literally has no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The only impacts are the dog which is named Luli and Kirsten quoting one line from the comic to Tyler at the end. Worse still, Tyler barely even reacts to Kirsten quoting it and then we don't even get an explanation to how this shaped Tyler's worldview as he dies two paragraphs later. I posit that you could literally delete every reference to Station Eleven (the comic) and the narrative stays the same. It is why the past sections didn't hit hard at all—there is no reason to spend that much time on Miranda creating Station Eleven just for the pay off to be practically nothing.

This is also one of my greatest "sins" in writing—having a comic book be part of the narrative and not showing it. Why can't we get black and white prints of the comic interspersed in the book, especially if it's supposed to be a such a big part of the story?

I also found every other character besides The Symphony to be more interesting, and I know why—they have names. It is insane to me that most of the members of The Symphony are referred to as their instrument. It kept me from getting attached to the characters. And for the ones that were named, I feel like we didn't get any resolution with them at the end.

Why didn't Kirsten and Sayid have a conversation after everything that happened? Why didn't we get to see Clark and Kirsten have that conversation about Arthur, especially because we had to spend so much time learning about him in the first place?

The story took too long to get back to Jeevan, Clark, and Miranda in my opinion. I wanted to know more about them, not Arthur's newest scandal. I especially wish we got more from Miranda post-apocalypse. It seems like she survived

(if her waking up to see ships on the horizon is any indication)

and I would have loved to know what life was like

on the other side of the globe

. Instead we got nothing but a lackluster ending. It should have ended when

Clark showed Kirsten the town with electricity

. I was shocked we got a whole section after that, for no reason that I could discern. 

Despite all my complaints, I still think the book is worth reading simply because of the premise. I know that seems crazy, but as I said before—I don't know of any other story that centers humanity's need for art in a post-apocalyptic setting. I have heard from some that it is better, so that is an option for experiencing the premise too. Since I liked the author's writing style so much, I would be open to reading another book by her in the future. 

P.S. There is a quote from the book that is not very remarkable, but has stuck with me nonetheless. Probably because it hits close to home, having experienced the Covid 19 pandemic.