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    A Beginning at the End: a novel
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    A Beginning at the End: a novel
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    A Beginning at the End: a novel
    Ebook435 pages7 hours

    A Beginning at the End: a novel

    By Mike Chen

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Featured in Polygon's Best of 2020

    “The best kind of dystopian novel: one rooted deeply in the hearts of his characters and emphasizing hope and connection over fear.… Compelling, realistic, and impossible to put down.” —Booklist

    Four survivors come together as the country rebuilds in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic. A character-driven postapocalyptic suspense with an intimate, hopeful look at how people can move forward by creating something better.

    Six years after a virus wiped out most of the planet’s population, former pop star Moira is living under a new identity to escape her past—until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world for those still too traumatized to go outside, but she never reaches out on her own behalf. Rob has tried to protect his daughter, Sunny, by keeping a heartbreaking secret, but when strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.

    Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny meet by circumstance and their lives begin to twine together. When reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before—and everything they still stand to lose. Because sometimes having one person is enough to keep the world going.

    “A slice-of-life at the end of the world, tender, character-driven, and gentle—which makes it feel all the more terrifyingly plausible…. profoundly subversive and honest… This book is never bleak. Instead, hope reverberates through every character and plotline.” –Tor.com on A Beginning at the End
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarlequin MIRA
    Release dateJan 14, 2020
    ISBN9781488055355
    Author

    Mike Chen

    Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, Light Years From Home, and other novels. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, Tor.com, and StarTrek.com, and in a different life, covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mikechenwriter

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    Reviews for A Beginning at the End

    4/5

    66 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Too real, especially now that we're living in a pandemic. I like how the stories merge.
    • 3/5
      Reading this just as the Coronavirus is threatening the world and seeing photos of Chinese and people in airports wearing face masks made this an even more powerful story. I am not fond of post-apocalyptic fiction and this book with a more positive ending made me enjoy the story.
    • 4/5
      A Beginning At The End by Mike Chen is a tale of humanity's survival following a slatewiper pandemic that killed off over two-thirds of the population. Those left either live in Metros (remnants of large cities), or out in 'Reclaimed Territory' (more like homesteaders, reclaiming areas away from the Metros). There are piratical gangs that prey on travellers too. Nearly a decade after the initial outbreak, a new evolution of the virus is threatening another pandemic. In the midst of this, peoples' lives go on. Rob struggles to prove he is 'socially normal' or risks losing his daughter, Sunny. Moira has doubts about her upcoming wedding, that her deepest secret may be revealed, and her overbearing father may find her. Rob and Moira become acquainted with each other through Krista, the event planner working with Moira on her wedding. As the threat of a new pandemic begins to loom over them all, each begins to grow and change, learning who they really are, who they can trust, and what they value most. Each learns to accept their past and forgive themselves and others. I adored Sunny! She's a very intelligent child, and certainly can be sure of herself. That leads her to some trouble later, as she's determined to find Krista's doctor uncle who she thinks has made/can make her mother better. She serves as a glue that begins binding this small group together. Her relationship with her da is great, and Sunny quickly wins over Moira and even Krista. I liked that, despite this being a post-apocalypse story, it's very much more people driven. It's just these few characters and how they are coping, as opposed to the much broader, less personal scope I've found in other post-apocalyptic fiction I've read. Not that I dislike those types of stories, but seeing the more personal impact was nice.I felt the pacing was slow at times, especially for the first third to half of the book, but it wasn't a deterrent to me. Once they have to find Sunny, things really pick up, and we get a broader look at how society is functioning after the initial pandemic. I quite enjoyed visiting the campus reclaimed territory run by Narc, one of Moira's friends. I admit, I was confused by the MoJo story thread, as it really seemed minor key, overall. It didn't detract from the overall tale though! Recommended, especially if you enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction! ***Many thanks to the Netgalley & Harlequin/Mira for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
    • 4/5
      This novel of the near future of 2025 has three interwoven strands and three main characters. There's Moira, formerly Mojo, the wildly popular teen rock star, who escaped her father's crushing hold on her ten years earlier and changed her identity. Then there's Krista, the financially strapped wedding planner whom Moira has hired to organize her wedding to Frank. And Rob, the single widowed dad of 7-year-old Sunny, who he's allowed to think her mother is still alive. Since a virulent flu decimated the world's population and sent civilization and technology backward, each of the three characters has struggled in his or her own way to deal with "PASD," a ptsd of the pandemic. As the story unfolds, Moira has decided to call off her wedding and her father has pulled out all the stops to find her. Krista continues to avoid all commitment, and decides to betray Moira's trust and turn her in for the huge reward. And Rob is threatened by Sunny's school that she will be taken away from him because she is acting out at school. Their separate crises end up bringing the three together, especially when Sunny disappears and they set off together to find her. Although not a mystery, this book is a page-turner for the suspense right up until the end.
    • 4/5
      So a post pandemic society book. I had no idea that this was the main theme of the book. Timing is everything. Loveable characters and nice scene work.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Hey, a pandemic novel! Man, what it must feel like to publish this right before Covid.

      Not bad. I appreciated that he was trying to do something different--not the pandemic itself, not a dystopian social collapse story, but what happens down the line when people are trying to move on. It's more character focused SF than a plot or world-building one, and the characters are generally well done.
    • 3/5
      This book held promise but fell somewhat short of my expectations. I understand the author was aiming for a lighthearted and uplifting tone, and I can see how some will enjoy that and may even prefer it.There were too many coincidences that I felt were unbelievable. “Of course Rob meets this person and of course that person knows this one” and so on. Two characters fall in love and it just came across as forced and unrealistic, like a run of the mill romantic comedy. The majority of the action comes at the third act, when 3 of the characters go in pursuit of another one. There is also hints sprinkled throughout of a tragic event caused by a cult and its leader that is never explained, and seems like useless filler.
    • 4/5
      Given what is going on in the world currently, the world-building hit very close to home and had some eerie parallels. And although the book is slow at times, Chen is masterful at creating authentic characters.
    • 3/5
      Six-word review (1): Post-pandemic survivors navigate strange new world.or Six-word review (2): Pretty weak, but I liked it.The striking thing about this sounds-like-a-first-novel-but-isn't is that it is set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic--but was published on January 14th, 2020, before anyone knew what was about to come down on us (unless author Mike Chen had some advance word that most of us never heard).That was the hook that led me to download it for my Kindle and plunge through it in between a couple of pretty heavy tomes.(What does it say about our time that a novel about a lethal global virus and the ensuing social upheaval is escapist reading?)This story was very amateurish-sounding right from the start, and showing no evidence of a solid edit. Either of those two things usually makes me head straight for the exit. But in the special circumstances of September 2020, I persisted.There are some good ideas here, such as how people adapt to being survivors after 70 percent of the U.S. population has succumbed to disease and what it's like to see familiar neighborhoods morph into alien territory. People suffer from something called "Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder" and form self-help groups modeled on AA to help them cope with the upheaval of their lives, personal losses, and the changed world.People wear masks in this story, for their own protection (remember: this came out before February of 2020, and we had never heard of the covid-19 coronavirus then). As an aside, by the time I read it a month or so ago, I wondered: why didn't the CDC just tell people that masks were for their own protection? I'll bet most people would have bought that and worn them.On the minus side, the main characters never gain dimensions. There are two women and a man, and even though the two women are nothing alike I had trouble remembering which was which because they had so little solidity. Worse yet, there's a little girl, one so flimsy that if the others are cardboard, she's made out of tissue paper, cutesy name and all. When she gets lost, I find myself hoping they never find her. Chen shouldn't feel too bad about that, though; even Stephen King can't write kid dialogue that doesn't make you gag.There's also a lot of clumsy exposition. It can be hard to do well, I grant you that; but then, if we can't do it, we're not ready for prime time.I did like the way the author endowed one of the two women with some impressive survival skills, including parkour. The major conflicts right out of Writing 101, involving guarding old secrets, just never feel genuine, and the climactic chapter is downright cloying. Chen could have used a lot of help with the moment of supposed resolution, but his friends probably told him it was just great.One annoying pimple on the chin of this novel is the author's obvious unawareness of the meaning of some words he uses repeatedly--and the fact that no editor came to his rescue by chopping them out. An example is "smirk," which Chen seems to think is the same as a pleased smile or a grin. Actually it's an irritatingly smug sort of smile, such as you see when someone has bested an opponent, and not anything pleasant or charming; and yet we have numerous instances such as this: "Her face lit up with a smirk." Some wrong word choices lead to bizarre imagery: "Moira stood poised, ... her legs coiled and ready."And I'll bet the author has never actually lugged a cat carrier very far, never mind trying to run with it. The cat in the box ought to have suffered a concussion, at least, if not the equivalent of being tossed in a clothes dryer. I'm not sorry I read it, and it was uncannily timely, with some well-thought insights for a plague-ridden planet. One nicely paranoia-inducing idea was of the government's absorbing the unclaimed funds from the millions of casualties. I also liked the resurgence of old technologies such as CDs. Nonetheless, I'm glad it didn't last any longer. I can't in good conscience give it much of a recommendation, and I won't be rushing to read his next book.Nice try, though, Mike. You get points for doing it and daring to put it out there. It's not easy. And I did, after all, like it more than I didn't like it.