A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

3.0 out of 5 stars

A fertility epidemic (slowly) wiped out 99.9999% of the world's population. The remaining survivors are scattered around the globe. Griz lives on a small, Scottish island with several family members and two dogs. When one of the dogs is stolen by a mysterious visitor, Griz sets off across the sea and barren landscape to bring the dog back home.

C.A. Fletcher paints a vivid picture of an abandoned, post-apocalyptic world, but this is a tough book to rate. I did not find Griz's story to be compelling...at all...until the final 10% of the book. It was a quick read and that excellent last section made the uninteresting journey somewhat worthwhile. I did appreciate that Fletcher's choice of narration style is part of the story and even pays off in the final pages.

If you like this book, there are a few genre-similar books that I also enjoyed: The Wolf Road, The Fireman, The Dog Stars, and Station Eleven.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

I ended up really enjoying listing to this book. While I'm not a huge fan of the post apocalyptic sub genre, especially in literature, as with most art quality will overcome much. It seems the author, is more of a fan of this type of story then me, and does allude to this in the story. And that is a good thing, I think it helps in both them crafting a good story, and knowing both what tropes work, and what ones are ripe for being manipulated.

The story itself is much more a traditional young adult natural adventure novel, just set in a world that his been very depopulated. But what I really enjoyed about this story is how it ended up being a story it keeps telling you it is not. The lead character, Griz, narrates the novel, and Griz is a reader. And this is how the author ends up mentioning other P-A stories that obviously influenced this one. I'm a bit surprised that more of the adventuring stories don't also get name checked since like I said they are obviously a big influence as well.

I'm usually a bit vague regarding plots in my reviews, since I don't like to spoil the experience for the future reader. And I'm going to be so in this one is well. Especially since I very much enjoyed going into this fairly cold and just enjoying the ride as Griz went adventuring.

I was inspired to read this book while it was one I had for a while, was also on Jenny (Reading Envy) Colvin's to read pile as well. And since she had just passed, I thought it was appropriate to not only read a few books on that list, but also to write up some reviews, since that was something she was always doing. After finishing this, it also made me a bit sad that she had not gotten around to this one, since what little I know about her, I think she would have very much enjoyed it as well.

This is gonna be a spoiler free review so I'm gonna omit anything that even alludes to the twist(s) because I feel like that would rob anyone interested in picking this book up of its best parts. Let me start off by saying that I love this book. I loved it! I'm writing this review 2 days after I finished it and after reading one other (critically acclaimed too!) and yet this is the book I'm still thinking about.It took me back to the books I was assigned to read in elementary school in the sense that I came in with an open mind not knowing what to expect (and maybe because the books I was assigned to read in elementary school included [b:Where the Red Fern Grows 10365 Where the Red Fern Grows Wilson Rawls https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518702249l/10365.SY75.jpg 115] and [b:Hatchet 50 Hatchet (Brian's Saga, #1) Gary Paulsen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385297074l/50.SX50.jpg 1158125]) and just falling in love.As much as I loved it, it took me almost a month to get through this relatively short novel. It starts off slow and stays slow for most of the story, and there are many instances of very deliberate foreshadowing thrown in that effectively informs us readers that something terrible is just in the horizon. It's a creeping sense of dread that was hard for me to push through at times because I am a sap and I don't like it when bad things happen to characters I love. Don't let this put you off because even through the feelings of impending doom, Griz is such a natural storyteller and beautiful mind that there is warmth and comfort interspersed between the harrowing story of a kid exploring a mostly abandoned world. But then it hits that MASTERFUL twist and things go from 1 to 100 at light-speed. It was like being doused in cold water in the best possible way. A shock to your system that makes you want to reread the entire book again with the new lens you are given. The last part of the book is so different from the start and middle. I was sweating, my heart was beating fast, I needed to turn the page to see what happened next. And I needed to know whether the whole journey I took with Griz through the ruins of a world that this character never experienced, that was once my home, was worth it.So was it worth it? That's for you to find out :)

Easily this book is a 4.5 out of 5 for me. From the very first page, I was hooked. I read this book as an audiobook, which is narrated by the author himself. The performance was outstanding. It really was like reading a letter from a friend. It wasn't needlessly overcomplicated and THE PLOT TWISTS! I just.. wow. This book was great and I recommend it to everyone, especially to those who love a good character journey. It was like the Odyssey– but with the end of the world.. and dogs. ♥

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is an uplifting apocalyptic novel that was enjoyable, but not overly so. The book was filled with moments of suspense, but unfortunately proved a bore between moments of excitement. The author's frequent use of forwards also proved disconcerting to me. I read this book for a book club, and am ultimately glad I read it, but it took me awhile to get through it and doubt I'd reread it.