The Last Man on Earth Club
by Paul R. Hardy
CreateSpace
Copyright © November 2011
ISBN: 978-1466361829
418 Pages
$13.99 Paperback
$2.99 Kindle
Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt
4 out of 5
ABOUT:
Six people are gathered for a therapy group deep in the countryside. Six people who share a unique and terrible trauma: each one is the last survivor of an apocalypse.
Each of them was rescued from a parallel universe where humanity was wiped out. They’ve survived nuclear war, machine uprisings, mass suicide, the reanimated dead, and more. They’ve been given sanctuary on the homeworld of the Interversal Union and placed with Dr. Asha Singh, a therapist who works with survivors of doomed worlds.
To help them, she’ll have to figure out what they’ve been through, what they’ve suffered, and the secrets they’re hiding. She can’t cure them of being the last man or woman on Earth. But she can help them learn to live with the horrors they survived.
REVIEW:
I’m usually not one for science fiction, but I have a weakness for apocalyptic fiction. Whether it’s the all-consuming zombie virus, or just the scientific deterioration of the world, I find myself drawn to stories that contain some type of cataclysm. When I read the synopsis for The Last Man On Earth Club, I couldn’t refuse.
Everyone has a theory as to how the world will end, but Paul R. Hardy presents us with six.
Imagine if you can. There are an unlimited amount of parallel universes, with one that had been dubbed the Hub. The Hub’s main goal is to scour all of the parallel universes for worlds (or Earths) that are in trouble. Their function is to keep these worlds alive by intervening and providing the people with the resources that they need, or evacuate the remaining refugees to the Hub.
The Last Man On Earth Club is exactly that. The Hub was too late in six universes, and the result was that there was only a sole survivor of the “species” on each planet. The catastrophes range from machine/human wars, nuclear fallouts, zombie plagues, species extinction (on a world with more than one species of humans), spontaneous combustion, and an electromagnetic pulse phenomenon. The single survivors are sent to Hub to begin post-traumatic stress disorder therapy as a group. In a way that reminded me of The Breakfast Club, the group talks out the trauma that they endured.
This book is a huge bite at a staggering 170,000 word count, and I almost wanted to pass on reading it because of the length. I’m glad that I didn’t. The book is broken down into individual therapy sessions that I found compelling. I only had two complaints: a lack of physical descriptions of characters, and not attributing dialogue in group therapy. It can get a little confusing when you’re not sure who is speaking in a room of seven people, especially when the characters are growing and changing so much.
Overall I really enjoyed the book, even though it felt like reading six apocalyptic books at the same time. It’s not the regular horror stories that I normally read, but there are the elements of horror with the sense that nothing is under control, and you are helpless to the inevitable.
