Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John
Publication: September 9, 2014
Publisher: Vintage
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci Fi
Pages: 353
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Set in the days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
REVIEW:
Honestly, this book has been on my TBR or on my radar for a while. However, when the time came for use to read a fantasy book for the month of June, I knew that this was the one I wanted to read. I was also excited because I knew from past articles I read when the book first came out that it also took place in Michigan which is my home state and the place I currently live. I was excited to read it.
The story follows a group of people. Each of them have different backgrounds. One was a paparazzi turned paramedic in training, one was a child at the beginning of the story and a woman when it ends, one of them is a well-known actor who seems lost in his own world. WOW…. this book is about a pandemic and how each of those characters handles it. Some died prior to the pandemic but their lives wrap through the pandemic and affect people who lived through it. It was eerily spooky to how the current pandemic we live in affected people. What’s even spookier is the fact that this book came out in 2014 yet it felt like it was just the current time period.
I will say this book wasn’t triggering for me with the current state of affairs. I did find it rushed at the end and ends left open. I was left wondering besides being the comic book threaded throughout the book that Station Eleven isn’t elaborated upon at all. I wanted more about this book. I needed to know why it was so important to the characters. I don’t want to say that I didn’t like the book because I did, it was just meh I wasn’t looking forward to the next time I powered on my kindle. It was good and had it moments it just didn’t keep me really engaged. I did love seeing the characters as they progressed through the story. They grew as individuals and you saw the way they changed. Some for the good and some for the bad. I don’t know if I would actually recommend this book to someone or not and I am not sure if I will read anything else by this author. Read the book yourself and make your own decision.
