The End of Men 

By. Christina Sweeney-Baird 

P. 400 

Format: eArc 

Rating: *** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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TW - This book is about a pandemic. 

 

In The End of Men a pandemic wipes out 90% of all men on the planet. The story is a catalog of the surviving women. It is told from multiple perspectives of women from varying backgrounds. The characters are used to move the plot forward. In such a narrative style it should be a strongly character based book. Yet, it is not. It is really the plot that moves the narration forward. The plot is just interwoven through multiple characters narration. 

 

The main reason that this works is that the characters do not really chance. The voice all stays the same. I am very bad with names, and I often forget all but the MC name when reading a book. Since there were a variety of MC and the names were all so dang generic (Amanda, Elizabeth, Cathrine, Lisa) I couldn’t remember who was who. I also could not tell who was who from their narrative voice. I had to wait for a context clue - ie this is the one who works at such and such job. This is the one that had this husband. Even the sole male narrator had a similar voice. 

 

The story itself was interesting to read. It was a bit of a hard subject after a year of living through our own pandemic, but it was fascinating to see how the author pictured human responses. The plot was chillingly realistic. 

 

I really do wish that the author spent some time talking about gender vs. biological sex. For 90% of the novel they were treated as one and the same thing. The last minute save at the end of the novel was not enough. Also, human biological sex is not as simple as the book suggested and that was never brought up by the genetic scientists. 

 

I did enjoy reading it, and do feel like it is worth the read. However, I would suggest you check it out of the library before you invest in your own copy.