I quite enjoyed this story. The author sets the tone from the first chapter. Millions are already dead as a force simple called The Calamity arrives and begins to destroy everything. Humanity has one year left. A politician is about to k themselves. Despair is driving the world to collapse. Through it all, a group of friends have a bittersweet birthday party full of laughter and hope. That’s how the entire novel unfolds. Joy mixes with terror as reality breaks. The Calamity is never completely explained but I think that was the point. It’s the Macguffin of the end that triggers everything.
The friend group is charming, funny, believable, and complex. Each character has a broader personality trait, but they all are given moments of complexity to give them rounded differences. Their eventual intimacy together might be uncomfortable or awkward for some readers, but it’s presented in a straightforward, not overly erotic manner. I took it as a group of young people who lost everything seeking true connnection at the end of the world.
Kureha herself is a great lead, full of rage and sorrow at her lost future and the lost futures for those she cares for. She’s never overly cutesy or positive. She lives on in spite and challenge, which was refreshing. Her journey of acceptance is interesting and presents a nice concept that peace doesn’t have to mean release. I also appreciated that the author seemingly doesn’t try to espouse on What Does It All Mean? The characters all ask such things, and struggle with processing what the point existence is, but it’s never soap boxy or haughty. In fact, at the point when I thought Kureha might go on a deep spiritual journey with a monk in the mountains, she ended up basically telling him to F off lol.
The characters they meet along the way range from kind, insane, melancholy, to downright evil. It’s a fun framing device to set up Kureha’s introspective journey.
Most of the story unfolds at a steady drip of terror on the horizon, with small instances and hints of what is to come. But when the terror does arrive, the final chapters devolve into a truly unsettling nightmare scenario where not even light itself can exist. The friends go from singing their hearts out in a van at the beginning to wandering the void in absolute silence, all while never leaving one another. It’s a terrifying, heartbreaking end with no thought of hope, but in the view of a full end to humanity, I think it was quite appropriate. Reading the final chapters devolve left me heartbroken for Kureha and the others, and I’m grateful to have gone on this journey with them.