4 “End of the World As We Know It” Book Recs

Post-breakdown of society/post-“apocalyptic” books have always been a favorite subgenre of mine. It’s less that it’s the end of the world entirely, and more that it’s the end of the world as we know it. Following characters as they take on an entirely new landscape—or perhaps hellscape—of what’s left of humanity after everything they think they know is gone opens up so many opportunities not just for action and drama but also for character development and hope. Granted, sometimes it feels like we are just a hair too close to experiencing some of these plots in real life, but nonetheless, I can’t shake the love for this type of book. 

I just finished reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and was absolutely obsessed, so I thought I’d recommend a few of my other favorite “end of the world as we know it”, post-breakdown of society books. Please note this isn’t even all of my favorite books in this subgenre, but for now, let’s start with these four (especially because some of these get less attention than they probably deserve…in my humble opinion, of course).

Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun

Black Moon, published in 2014, takes the post-breakdown of society idea to an absolutely terrifying new place with a unique take on what caused the breakdown of society. We have lots of post-apocalypse books that begin with nuclear wars, outbreaks of disease, even zombies, but in Black Moon, what kicks everything off is much more simple: sleep. 

That’s right. Not food, not water, not war. Just sleep. 

In Calhoun’s imagined society, sleep is the hottest commodity in the world as everyone loses the ability to sleep entirely, and the world is mostly inhabited by severe insomniacs. Think about yourself when you’re low on sleep—confused, disoriented, irritable. Now imagine everyone is like that and it just keeps getting worse and worse because no one is sleeping ever, and nothing can be done about it. Not even sleeping pills take the edge off. 

In this lack of sleep society, the few people who can still sleep are in danger, and often have to hide it from their less rational fellow humans who are on the brink of destroying anyone who can simply close their eyes and get peace. Everyone is realizing that such it was such a simple thing, and they’d taken it for granted when it was still available. 

Black Moon bounces around between a few different interesting characters: Biggs, who is still able to sleep, but his wife isn’t, Lila, a teenager in an owl mask whose parents have become consumed by insomnia to the point of endangering her, Chase and Jordan, whose plan is to rob pharmacies and create their own drug empire, and Felicia, who was safe in perhaps the one place you’d want to be during this type of apocalypse: a sleep research facility. 

This book is one of my favorites in this category because it really does something different. This isn’t zombies or nuclear fallout. It’s something we all probably have taken for granted at times, and as someone who knows what it feels like to be bone deep tired, the thought of living in a humanity without sleep sounds absolutely horrific—and is depicted that way in this book. 

If you only pick up one book off this list (and hopefully you check out more than that, BUT if there can only be one), let it be this one. It’s really refreshing to read something so uniquely disconcerting. 

The Final Six by Alexandra Monir 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, until I’m blue in the face: I do not understand how this didn’t blow up into one of those super popular books that everyone is obsessed with, has boatloads of merch, and becomes like an instant bookstagram cult classic. 

Which is not to begrudge Monir the success she has achieved—and she has been very successful.I just think The Final Six deserves duology deserves so much more attention. Knowing what I know about YA, the bookish community, and the general interest of the YA bookish community, this checks every box, so I can’t understand why it isn’t everywhere. People are straight up sleeping on this book. We need to hype it more. 

Okay, okay, don’t stop reading—I’m done ranting, I swear. I just had to get it off my chest! I’ll stop now and tell you what’s going on here. 

The Final Six is a book I like to sometimes affectionately refer to as “The 100 in reverse”. Where as in The 100, teens are being sent back to Earth to see if it can be inhabited, in The Final Six, teens are being sent into space to see if there’s somewhere else that could be inhabited—specifically, Jupiter’s moon, Europa. In a slightly futuristic and not at all unfathomable version of Earth, the planet is on the brink of destruction, and will soon no longer be able to support human life. The space program recruits the best and the brightest teenagers from around the world—smart, dedicated, athletic—and they compete for six spots on a mission to attempt to colonize Europa. But the teens soon realize that even though they expected this mission to be dangerous, it’s actually far more dangerous than they ever could have realized, and that the higher-ups in the space program are definitely hiding something from them. 

This book has everything you’d want in a great YA—drama, action, romance, friendship, rivalry, and, hello, SPACE. This is easily one of my favorite post-apocalyptic/end of the world type books, and as the cherry on top of the space cake, it even has a sequel, in which the final six who are chosen finally do go to space, and things get wild. 

The 100 by Kass Morgan 

The 100 really hardly needs an introduction. I’m fairly certain most of you reading this have definitely heard of it, thanks to the CW television series adaptation that ran for seven seasons, it’s kind of a landmark of teen post-apocalyptic fiction. The characters in this series exist in a future in which Eart has already been destroyed by nuclear war and become uninhabitable for humans. Humanity has taken to the skies and now live together in a heavily-governed space station—but resources are running low. “The 100” are the group of teens that the space station officials decide to send to the ground to see if it is safe for humans to return to Earth. 

Reading the books and watching the show are definitely two very different experiences, so if you’re the type who is a big stickler for the adaptation sticking precisely to the text, it may bother you. You’ll meet slightly different characters, though most of the core cast remains, and they do have different characteristics and experiences. That being said, both the books and the show are good (we don’t talk about season 7), and really, really interesting. And at the end of the day, these books are, after all, the source material for the hit show—and after you read them you can binge all the seasons of the show and fall in love with Bellamy Blake all over again. And also a little bit with Octavia Blake, too. 

The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold 

The Electric Kingdom starts you off thinking we are reading another YA post-apocalyptic novel…and we are, to an extent. But as you read, it unfolds into so much more than just a tale of the end of the world. It starts off following a character named Nico and her dog, Harry, who are setting off on a journey to find some type of portal. Along the way, we collect more and more characters, which is really interesting, because we get to see how different people have been living since the collapse of the society and hear several different people’s stories. For example, one family has taken up residence in a movie theater, and we get to see how they’ve built a life there. 

We also get glimpses of a really mysterious character in a hillside home built like a bunker who is referred to only as “The Deliverer”, who details having lived life over and over again trying to fix the world and put society right. 

It’s hard to tell you too much about how awesome this book is without getting dangerously close to spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it at this: it’s way more than just an end of the world book, and there’s a lot of little things that happen throughout that I was so excited about when I saw how and why they all added up and what the bigger picture really was. Once things start coming together, it takes on a whole new layer, and I absolutely loved it. Suffice it to say it was directly in my wheelhouse. 

If you’re looking for post-apocalyptic fiction with a sci-fi twist, a found family aspect, some heartbreaking stories, a cute dog, and a lot of pop culture references, The Electric Kingdom will be in your wheelhouse, too. 

Have you read any of these books? Have I convinced you to add any of them to your wishlist? What post-apocalyptic/end of the world as we know it/post breakdown of society books would you recommend? Let me know in the comments! 

Edit: Hey, folks, it’s me from the future. Sorry this time travel expedition wasn’t as exciting as you were expecting—I’m actually just here to tell y’all that I made a new reel with a bunch of end of the world book recs, and some of them weren’t originally featured in this post so I wanted to pop in and add some more info about them/my thoughts on them in case anyone is curious. 

Severance by Ling Ma

In Severance, society is destroyed by a virus that essentially makes people lose their minds—they become unable to understand where they are or what they’re doing and basically get stuck on a loop, but it’s clear that even if the lights are on, nobody is home. This leads to the total collapse of society, as in some of the other books, and we see it from the POV of Candace Chen. This is kind of a darkly comic, somewhat satirical take on the post-apocalyptic novel, while still being pretty freaky. 

Candace discovers she is pregnant shortly before the outbreak of the virus, and joins up with a group who is traveling together to a supposed safe haven. The novel flashes back and forth between the present storyline of the journey and her experiences on the road and with the other people in the group, and the past where Candace talks about her unfulfilling job, her less than stellar boyfriend, and generally feeling kind of lost and unmoored in life. I liked the details about her shitty office job and how she was feeling about life and kind of going with the flow even when, at times, she wasn’t very happy. All the mundane details about her work and the different versions of Bibles they publish really amused me. 

Another cool aspect of this book that I enjoyed was the sort of in-between of after the collapse starts but before Candace begins travelling where she starts a blog called New York Ghost, where she is photographing abandoned parts of New York City and publishing them online, one of the last archives of the final moments of society as she knew it. I found it eerie but cool. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 

Everybody knows about Station Eleven by now, especially since it’s been made into a TV show (which I have not watched). I had this one on my list for a while, and Johnathan finally bought me a copy, so I dove in, not sure what to expect because it’s highly hyped and sometimes highly hyped just don’t turn out so hot for me. But with this one, that was not the case. This is a beautifully written novel about another plotline where a virus (this one flu-like in nature) wipes out about 90% of the population, resulting in a total societal collapse. It follows several different characters both in their past pre-collapse and in the present, post-collapse, and we get to see not only how these people adapt to a new way of life and a new world so different from the one before, how they survive, move on, and even find ways of bringing bits of beauty to a really dark landscape, but we also get to see how their storylines intersect and impact each other, even when they don’t necessarily realize it. It’s a well thought out, well written book that does a great job of portraying how small moments and seemingly minor interactions can cause a ripple effect on people’s lives. My copy is full of underlining because there were so many well-written and beautiful lines that I wanted to be able to go back to. If you have been unsure about this one because of the hype, it is entirely warranted and I encourage you to pick up a copy. And if you have been unsure about this one because it hits just a liiittle too close to home, I can tell you this: it is not only about darkness and horror. It’s also about companionship. Rebuilding. Gratefulness. The little moments. And about hope. So in my opinion, it’s definitely worth reading.