Author: Ann Christy

Publisher: Campfire Publishing

ISBN: 9781736040638

After a cataclysmic event where time freezes, a woman must learn how to continue living. As she starts exploring, she realizes there are others who have also survived but who may not have the same ultimate goal she does: to make everything right again. Science fiction author Ann Christy introduces a fascinating concept that is mostly successful in her compelling new book, The Never-Ending End of the World.

On an ordinary Sunday morning, 12-year-old Coco Wells gets up to enjoy breakfast with her family in their Manhattan apartment. Without warning, the world experiences an extreme event, and Coco makes a horrifying discovery. Her family members are stuck in time. Her mother is flipping the same pan of pancakes over and over again; her little brother is in bed on the verge of waking up. The next-door neighbor, people on the street, everyone is tracking back and forth between a set of moments and can’t seem to get out.

Coco tries to move between those stuck, but she makes her second awful discovery. If she touches anyone in a repeating pattern or speaks to them, that person breaks out of the pattern, becomes violent, and then dies. The ones stuck in shorter patterns—what Coco quickly deems “loops”—disappear without a trace. 

For over a decade, Coco has tried to figure out how to move between the loopers. After careful observation and with nothing but the regular movement of time on her side, Coco realizes not everyone is stuck in the same length of loop. Some, like her little brother, are in short loops that last mere minutes. Others are in loops that can go an hour or more. All of the loopers perform the same tasks again and again, and none of them know she’s there.

She meets one other unlooped person, but when Coco loses her she makes an important decision. She needs to leave the city and look for others free from the looping. Her travels lead her to Jorge and Tamara, two other unlooped people who tell Coco about a settlement of people called the Seekers. The Seekers are dedicated to figuring out how the time freeze happened and how to fix it. Soon enough, Coco joins their community and their cause. 

She learns the Seekers are at odds with another group called the Chosen who believe some great cosmic force handpicked them to survive the Loop. The Chosen aren’t as concerned with figuring out what happened; they want to know how to live through it and come out on the other end. Friendships and relationships between the Seekers and the Chosen spring up, but neither group acquiesces to the other’s beliefs.

As decades pass and people start getting comfortable with the “new normal,” Coco, Tamara, Jorge, and other Seekers realize they’re at a crucial decision point. If they ever want to end the Loop, they’re going to have to take a huge gamble. The solution to fixing the Loop may lie with one of them, but it may also cost them everything.

Author Ann Christy’s invention of a post-apocalyptic event is unique. Her descriptive scenes and consequences of interacting with the loopers show a great deal of thought and consideration for her main premise: what would happen if time stopped for the majority of people on Earth? Readers will follow Coco as well as Forrest, one of the Chosen, through journal entries and narratives that set up a fantastic read.

The science behind the reason for the Loop feels a little lightweight at times, and the small cast of characters may leave readers wondering about secondary characters on the periphery. Those characters are often referenced but don’t appear on the page much, even though the narrative indicates readers should be worried about them. In some places important events are mentioned in passing even as the characters agonize over them.

The book may have worked better as a duology or even as a series, but it’s a mostly satisfying read. Those who like science fiction to challenge them a little and don’t mind turning a blind eye to the lack of the science part will definitely enjoy this one. I recommend readers Bookmark The Never-Ending End of the World.