AN ENGLISH APOCALYPSE

Two brothers, separated since childhood, face the end of the world in Edge’s debut novel.

Paul has been having nightmares about an impending apocalypse. At first, he simply shrugs them off, but then he realizes that his wife and children are suffering similarly dark dreams. One night, he hears his wife, Kate, muttering in her sleep, telling him he’s “the first of the seven.” As a result, Paul decides to quit his job and prepare for the coming calamity. He soon realizes that he needs to build a survivalist colony, although he plans to keep the purpose of the project a secret from others, including his family.With the help of experts from a number of fields, he acquires an island off the coast of Scotland, where he establishes Summer Haven. However, Paul isn’t aware that he has a twin brother who was given up for adoption at the age of 7 and raised in Spain. Francisco, also known as “El Tigre,” possesses some unique abilities—including karate training—and leads a life of vigilantism. When a meteor shower unexpectedly strikes Earth, Francisco’s wife and daughter are killed—and it turns out that the meteors have brought a disease with them that turns people into cannibalistic zombies. Can Paul’s preparations and Francisco’s survival skills keep them alive long enough for them to reunite? Edge’s prose is urgent in tone, if sometimes clunky: “It was the most surreal scene. In her headscarf and Gucci coat, the woman was actually trying to bite the old lady, specifically targeting the neck. Meanwhile the man was trying to rip off the old lady’s clothes to expose the flesh in her midriff.” The plot isn’t terribly sensible or realistic—at one point, for instance, Francisco fights a tiger at the zoo—and the zombie-apocalypse premise isn’t improved by the brothers’ pursuit of vaguely mystical destinies. Some of the descriptions of the colony prep work are satisfying to read. However, the zombies arrive fairly late in the story, at roughly the halfway point, and many readers may wish that the author started the action more quickly.

A promising but ultimately underwhelming novel about a worldwide catastrophe.