The Electric Kingdom

by Professor Emeritus of History David Arnold

New York Times bestseller David Arnold's most ambitious novel to date; Station Eleven meets The 5th Wave in a genre-smashing story of survival, hope, and love amid a ravaged earth.

When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.

• ISBN10: 0593202228
• ISBN13: 9780593202227
• Publish Date: 9 February 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780593202227

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

I received a copy of The Electric Kingdom in exchange for a fair and honest review.

David Arnold is back with another mind bend of a read in The Electric Kingdom. It's a novel that merges speculative fiction with dystopian writing, and will leave you thinking for days to come.

The world as we know it has ended. The Fly Flu made sure of that. It leaves no species untouched as it tears across the earth, leaving the world in a true dystopian state. Yet there are survivors. There are always survivors.

Nico and her beloved dog are two such survivors. She's off in search of something that very well may not exist. Meanwhile, young artist Kit was content with the life he had, until everything changed. Again.

They are but two players in a complex tale, one that truly will throw the reader through countless loops, creating plenty of food for thought.

“The earth is 4.54 billion years old,” said Kit. “Humans have been around for 200,000 years. The planet could blink and miss us. Our extinction would be a return to the status quo.”

The Electric Kingdom is one of those novels that will leave you sitting long after you've completed the book. It'll stick in your brain, and leave you thinking for hours, if not days. It's that much of a mind-bender, and I mean that in the best ways possible.

The novel includes a rich cast of characters, all of whom work together, intentionally or not, to tell this complex story. It's one of hope and survival, but it's also more than that. So much more than that.

For much of this novel, it reads like a standard dystopian novel, with a few alarming twists, of course. There are notable surprises however. One perspective really works to bring in the speculative fiction element, which gets even stronger towards the end. While I knew that this wasn't going to be a typical read, I still wasn't prepared for the shift that occurred. It caught me off-guard, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

To say that The Electric Kingdom is a heavy read would be an understatement. Though I might not have been inclined to bring that up if we were at any other point in time. The truth is, disease and isolation wear heavy on our hearts right now, and David Arnold hit the nail on the head with his writing.

The Electric Kingdom was the first novel I've read by David Arnold, but if all of his books make you think this much, you better believe I'll be reading everything else that he comes out with!

Check out more reviewers over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks