Firstly, thank you to S&G for the book giveaway that I received my copy from. It was a very pleasant surprise.

As the story begins, you get a strong feeling that Will has spent much of his time in this apocalyptic world, by living quiet, simply, and by reading. His mind is always running, which seems uncharacteristic of a monk type man who's been living at a Gonpa for what seems like before the mass chaos of this world, but more indicative of someone who's anxiously trying to hold onto humanity, to language, and to sense of self by holding on to every word like a walking thesaurus.

Writing letters for ghosts of his past, his loyal corvid friend Peau, and the quite persnickety Cassie the cat, are his lifelines to sanity when he often is alone on this quest to potentially give humanity hope again. Peau often "chatters" at him, leaving Will to interpret much of the communications his feathered friend. Cassie is the typical cat, most of the interactions are much like that of a cat and the owner sassing each other. He comes across the rare settlement on occasion, and manages to still find kindness in what seems to be a continually cruel world.

However, the pack of men at his heels reminds him that it's not always easy to fight the conundrum of his position, to choose between his principles or his life. Without principles, we are much like animals. (Which doesn't seem like such a bad thing considering his chosen company.) Without life, it's pretty hard to maintain your principles

The book starts on a hugh adventurous note, takes a dip in the middle but once on the road again it picks up. The ending is left up to interpretation, but it seems to show that things larger than the immediate world can guide our actions but in the end, it takes action to see reaction. This book does have the rare apocalyptic happy ending. Will gets his answers, and to some degree Sophie will get agency in choice of what answers she wants.


CONS: Half way through the book he gets Sophie and it is way too much of in common with The Last of Us plot, the sass, the love of older pop culture magazines, even down to not being able to swim, that started sapping the joy from the book. Will is a great character but Sofie is way to much like Ellie to actually soak in their interactions. It knocked me out of the book towards the middle.

She does have different aspects to her but nothing specifically sticks out but the similarities really knocked it out of a 5 star book for me.