Apocalyptic Fevers And Ships: Two Novels Of Life After The Collapse

I've always been a fan of apocalyptic fiction. Plagues, zombies, alien invasions, world wars, the end of the world, I love 'em all. It's not that I'm morbid (or so I will defend to the bitter end). It's more that I like seeing how people envision humanity's response when everything falls apart. Two recent library impulse reads, Fever by Deon Meyer and The Ship by Antonia Honeywell, gave me a golden opportunity to visit two visions of a world in collapse.

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FEVER (DEON MEYER)


Fever has been getting some buzz about being the next great apocalyptic epic, and it's got some great blurbs from people who know something about that genre (such as Stephen King himself). Set in South Africa, mostly in the village of Vanderkloof in the Northern Cape, it picks up after a plague has wiped out the vast majority of the world. Infrastructure is down; desperation is creeping in. The story begins with a father and son's fight for survival before morphing into the chronicling of the rise of a city in the midst of a dangerous and lonely world.

It's hard to highlight the strength of this story, because it did everything well. The depth and development of the characters were compelling (it's a father/son story at heart, but there is much more at work). The rising tension and increasing stakes felt realistic. Fever even shows how its easy for bigger-than-life heroes to build the historical mythology of a culture. I could gush, but I have more dignity than that as of now. A couple things stood out to me that set this story apart.