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Fantasy book review: Pandemic books (Station Eleven and A Beginning At The End)

I'm not ready to read about pandemics. That's what I learned, in accidentally reading two books about pandemics. Seems like something I would have known earlier, right? 

I picked up The Beginning At The End (2020) by Mike Chen after listening to a Manuscript Academy podcast episode featuring the author and his agent. In the podcast they talked about how Chen has had a difficult time selling some of his books, because they're slightly too literary to be classified as fantasy, but slightly too fantastical to be called literary. I received very similar feedback on The Wedding Crown, so I thought I should really read some of Chen's work to learn about what a commercial-literary-fantasy book could look like. 

What stood out to me about this book were the characters. This book follows their feelings and relationships in a way that almost mirrored the conventions of a romance novel's structure. I liked it. I liked the characters, and I liked the way their stories twined together as we learned more about the world in the aftermath of a global, air-born pandemic. The fact that this book was published before the start of COVID-19 is incredible; I wonder how much the author researched what a pandemic would look like, because so much of it was painfully spot-on. 

Continuing on my quest to read more literary fantasy, next I picked up Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St. John Mandel. Again, I had no idea that this was a pandemic book. I thought Station Eleven was a sci-fi novel. 

Where The Beginning At The End was a wistful look at human fear and decency, Station Eleven was a horrifying glimpse into what could still come to pass, if we continue to allow COVID to mutate by avoiding vaccinations. Reading Station Eleven at the start of the Omicron wave felt a little bit like reading the Parable of the Sower in April 2020. Delicious, gripping, and nightmare-inducing. 

What I liked about Station Eleven was how much the narrative felt like a dance. The author moved us from scene to scene, from character to place and back in time. Each addition added a new layer of context to the character's decisions, even as the story itself fluttered around in your head. The non-linear structure was inspiring, even as I couldn't tell you what the actual plot was about. I loved it, and I can't wait to try something similar. I doubt that I could pull it off, but this book opened up a new door of ways to tell a story, and have it stick. 

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