Station Eleven: Unoriginal and Monotone (30Before30)

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Genres: Dystopian, Sci-Fi
Pages: 336
Goodreads

Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

This is the first book read and reviewed as part of the 30 Books Before 30 challenge/collaboration with Milana from A Couple Reads. She also has her review up today. Make sure to check it out!
CLICK HERE FOR HER POST

I genuinely don’t know where to begin with this post so it might be a bit of ranting and rambling. Oops.

This book almost had potential. I don’t want to say it did have potential because, in order for that, it would have required some major story changes. Basically, it needed to be a different book.

This is one of those books that follows multiple paths that end up connecting at the end in some way – that connection just wasn’t worth it. Frankly, what I would have loved was less of a focus on the life of the actor, Arthur, and more focus on the young actress, Kristen. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let’s try to break this down…

The characters…there are a lot of them, all very surface level. It follows five main characters with an assortment of side characters. Almost all of them just blend together because none have their own distinct voice. I read the entire book in the same dull tone with no real diversity between them except for their current circumstances.

The only redeeming character was Kristen. She’s a young actress that is present throughout the entire book. However, you don’t get a lot of information on her (or any of the characters, except Arthur). She seems like she has an interesting past since most of her growth happened after the epidemic (she was roughly 8 years old when the flu hit). For some reason, she’s really good with knives and has killed two people in the past (before you meet her in the after) – but we don’t find out much about it.

Even the plot is all over the place. That “dangerous self-proclaimed prophet” the summary talks about…yeah, don’t get your hopes up. His presence is short and anticlimactic. In fact, the entire apocalypse plot is anticlimactic and unoriginal. Don’t get me wrong, I love anything that has to do with the end of the world and survival, but Station Eleven did absolutely nothing unique.

As for the writing, to reiterate: I read this whole book with the same monotone voice. It felt so flat. In fact, one of my first notes while reading was “the writing is a little off for lack of a better term“. I couldn’t even describe it while reading – it’s just off.

Overall, I strongly disliked this book. If it was done completely different, it could be a good story, but that’s not the case. It’s full of flat characters, a messy plot, and so much uneccessary information about Arthur 14 years prior to the flu. I can’t even say this book is a character driven story – it’s not driven by anything and it left me feeling so unsatisfied.

Q&A WITH MILANA

In each review that is a part of the 30 Books Before 30 challenge, Milana and I will be including a Q&A section. It’s simple, after we finish reading the book, we ask each other a couple of questions (all unique) then share those answers here – like a mini-interview! So, here are the questions I asked Milana and her answers:

Q (me): What did you think of how all the stories came together? How they were “connected” in the end?
A (Milana): Seemed a bit anti-climactic when they connect. Nothing really stood out for me and there were deaths that seemed a bit pointless.

Q(me): Despite our overall feelings, did you have a favorite storyline? Maybe a character you wish was more of the focus of the story?
A (Milana): The only part I really liked was the concept of the Travelling Symphony. The characters didn’t really stand out except for Kristen, I would’ve preferred the storyline to center on her more.

If you want to know what she asked me and what my answers were, make sure to read her review!

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
Romance
Overall:	1 / 5