"You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t." Except that, now, of course we all can...3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I’ve read all of Lauren Beukes novels and my favorites are Zoo City and The Shining Girls. The thing I love most about this South African author is her knack for wildly inventive plot-lines – criminals who gets assigned animal companions or time travelling serial killers. That said, I thought the story line for Afterland was the most “nor

No recommendationsThis book was so unoriginal. There are old movies about this subject line. Lots of lengthy nonsensical drawn out descriptions of events and particular characters. The mother is an idiot making mistake after mistake which were so obvious. The reason I read the entire book as hard of a time as it seemed I dredged through, is I kept hoping it would get better and I like to read to the end. Don't waste your time as there is so much more out there to spend your time reading.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this dystopian thriller eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .This be me fourth book by the author.  I adored her shining girls and thought it was one of the best time travel books I have read.  I also very much enjoyed zoo city cause who doesn't want a giant sloth? This is a dystopian thriller where a plague has wiped out most of the men.  The remaining men are locked up for their own protection.  A mom, Cole,

3.5 starsI have read most of Lauren Beukes’s books and loved all of them. She has always had this undefinable element to her stories that made them stand out. From the bizzaro world of Zoo City to the creepy thriller The Shining Girls. The fact that she is a fellow South African made reading her unique books even more of a treat.With this latest installment however, I struggled to get completely lost in the story.There is not one glaring specific thing that bothered me just a few things that nig...

I just loved the idea of this book. A new virus has taken over which causes men B's boys to develop a fast acting prostate cancer. It then invaded the bones. A small percent of males are left over in this world. The book is told from 3 POVs. Cole (the mother), Miles (the son), and Billie (his aunt).The book started out great, a page turner, and then it just lost a lot of steam for me around the halfway point. I didn't really enjoy any of the characters. I kept waiting for Cole to be vulnerable a...

Afterland is an okay dystopian story. Somewhat of a rehash of the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man. How much knowledge Beukes had of that story or if she was influenced by it at all, I cannot say. But it is the same basic idea and premise. A virus wipes out all (or most) men and this is the aftermath as women inherit the earth. I enjoyed the graphic novel story a bit better, but this one will serve anyone looking for a dystopian fix.I have read a couple of Beukes previous novels (The Shining...

While I liked and even admired parts of Afterland, as a whole it was largely unsatisfying. That may say more about me than the book, so take my reservations with a grain of salt, but let me explain.First off, this was a book that largely ignored the half of the story I’d hoped would be its focus. This is largely Cole’s story, the story of a mother on the run with her child, desperate to get home and just as desperate to avoid dealing with her violence against her sister. All of that is fine, and...

**Let me preface this by saying, I'm sorry for the rant about antibiotics, but this is a real and serious problem the world is facing right now.I didn't even come close to finishing it, didn't really start it either. Got to about page 11 and just had enough of the writing style. For a story that seemed original to me (a post apocalyptic earth where most of the men have died out due to a viral outbreak) the writing/dialogue seemed anything but original; "arrest her, throw away the key" for exampl...

If Broken Monsters was Lauren Beukes’s great Clive Barker novel, then Afterland is her great Stephen King novel. By the way, I personally hate it when blurbs state breathlessly that if you loved ‘x’ by ‘y’ … then this is JUST the book for you because it is MORE of the same!Beukes has carved a niche for herself as one of the most innovative speculative-genre writers at work today, on the same level as Clive Barker and Stephen King. I deliberately use the term ‘speculative’, as opposed to the more...

3.5 starsMy first book by Buekes! She's clearly a talented writer, and this was very good, just not a perfect fit for me at the moment. A little more gritty realism than I was looking for right now.

”’And you’re returning to South Africa after your vacation?’‘Yes, that’s where we live,’ proud of the fact of it. Away from everyday Nazis and school shootings so regular they were practically part of the academic calendar along with prom and football season, away from the slow gutting of democracy, trigger-happy cops, and the terror of raising a black son in America. But how can you live there, people would ask her (and Devon, her American husband, especially), meaning Johannesburg. Isn’t it da...

By now, a lot of us have read a lot of dystopias featuring sexual politics, often accompanied with some major disaster that leaves women a huge minority (The Book of Etta) or (The White Plague) or any number of bigger named modern authors. This one flips the script. Men are seriously endangered. The few men left must deal with the patriarchy of women. :) Yes, patriarchy. Because let's face it, patriarchies are learned. All told, I loved the worldbuilding. There are a lot of great easter eggs and...

With transmisogyny fundamentally baked into the premise, and apparently a long history of cissexism before this, the author's presumed insights into gender, power and humanity are nothing but a trainwreck.

Turns out it's not particularly enjoyable to read about a fictional global pandemic when you as a reader are in the midst of one.The pandemic in Afterland is one which only affects men, and we find out that Cole has lost her husband to it, had some kind of altercation with her sister, Billie, as a result of the pandemic... and has a 12 year old son who has somehow survived unscathed by whatever this disease is. To protect Miles, Cole has him pretend to be a girl (Mila), and they go on the run to...

I was worried about picking up a book centred on a pandemic, I mean the timing is interesting isn’t it. But two things quickly became clear:1. The pandemic here is different - it only kills men2. The whole thing feels completely tongue-in-cheek and is impossible to take seriouslyCole and her son Miles escape a camp in California set up to protect and exploit some of the few remaining males - semen is gold. We’re not yet clear on the details but it seems that during the escape Cole may have kille...

Unfortunately this book was not for me. I almost DNFED it at 25%, 50%, and again even at 75%. As you can probably tell I do not like to DNF books, I think I owe the publishers and authors more than that. Even if I’m not enjoying a book I torture myself in hopes that the ending will blow me away—this HAS happened. But, alas—this was not the case here. I really did not enjoy this book. For two people that are running from the law, there was zero excitement whatsoever. I didn’t even fear for them.

Hmm, sounds promising. I LOVE The Handmaid’s Tale, and this book said it would focus on a different type of dystopia, one where men were the rarity. Unfortunately, this book failed to live up to its promise.The relationships between the characters is affected by a very cavalier way of describing their communications. Their deepest emotions are constantly trivialized with an odd, impersonal attempt at humor through unending pop culture references. In one passage, a woman comes to a realization ab...

Who knew a book about the apocalypse would ever hit so close to home? It was eerie reading this with everything going on in the world right now, it was just a little too close for comfort. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be so creeped out by this! It was a bit of a slow go at first and I was finding myself wishing it would just got on with it and that’s part of the reason why I had to dock a star. Once it did get going though I couldn’t get enough of it and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough...

Book Reviewed on www.whisperingstories.comAfterland is a dystopian novel set in a world where most men have died from viral prostate cancer. The book is set in the USA and begins right in the thick of the action as Cole flees with her son, twelve-year-old Miles, trying to get him to safety, preferable to South Africa, away from those who want him, including her sister Billie who Cole has just attacked and left for dead.Cole and Miles are from South Africa and had travelled to America with Devon,...

QUICK TAKE: I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories, and I was really looking forward to this story about a woman and her son trying to return home in a world where a majority of the male population has died off due to a mysterious disease. While I enjoyed the family relationships, I would have loved a little more world-building; as it was written, the story is a bit insular. That being said, if you're a fan of the genre, I think there's a lot that you will enjoy.