How the World Ends: Viruses again, this time a particularly virulent flu virus, which wipes out 5 billion people in its first year, and has the population of the planet down to about 38 million within a few years after that.
Hautman’s virus was way scarier than the virus in the first Fire-Us book. Possibly because we get to see how the virus works; and, more, because we’re aware that the virus is still out there–those who escaped live in small communities, try to limit contact with outsiders, yet know that the virus could still find them.
I can’t decide whether the ending quite worked for me. But the world of this book felt very real, with its apocalypse that is still, really, ongoing; again I’m reminded that the world doesn’t just end all at once, but keeps ending. And the story’s being set close to home–I recognized some of the Grand Canyon landmarks–made that world more convincing for me. The Southwest has precisely the sort of isolated communities that would manage to hang on after the world ends, after all.