by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Comet's Curse, A Galahad Book, by Dom Testa, Tor Books, 2010,
ISBN 0-765-32107-6
Available from Powell's Books

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, Vintage, 2009 Movie Edition,
ISBN 0-307-45529-7
Available from Powell's Books

Pride an Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame Smith and Jane Austen, Quirk Books, 2009, ISBN 1-594-74334-7
Available from Powell's Books


What do these stories have in common?

A 21st-century ark blasts into space with a crew of teens who must abandon Earth to avoid a mysterious epidemic and preserve the future of humankind.

A weary and nameless father and son trudge the ashen landscape of what appears to be a post-nuclear war America.

Finally, a plague of zombies terrorize late eighteenth century England.

End-of-the-world fervor
Three books have sat on my desk far too long, all begging to be returned to the library for other borrowers. They are Dom Testa’s young adult novel The Comet’s Curse, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner The Road, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s clever bit of literary piracy Pride and Prejudice and  Zombies.

Mixing the three in one article may seem unfair , yet together they provide a picture of the current rage for end-of–the-world tales.

This is particularly exemplified by a Hollywood’s current apocalyptic fit ranging from the hilarious Zombieland to the special effects blockbuster 2012 to the grim and grimy movie based on McCarthy’s novel.

Plus, it appears that a television mini-series is planned for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and that Testa’s novel—book 1 in his Galahad outer space series—has also been optioned. It is easy to imagine a teen television series based on the Galahad stories. Here are three views of the end of time as posed in the novels mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Teens in space: The Comet’s Curse
Where does this author get all his energy? Dom Testa is a morning drive-time radio personality on Denver’s lively “Dom and Jane Show.”

Testa is also the author of six YA novels in the Galahad series about super competent teenagers who are chosen to save humankind from extinction by voyaging into outer space when Earth becomes tainted with a deathly virus.

As the young crew of spaceship Galahad departs Earth, they leave their families behind forever. While this is deeply sad if one takes time to ponder it, the characters in Comet’s Curse are far too busy doing their jobs and solving a dangerous mystery to let grief overwhelm them.

Plus, Testa, who is naturally lighthearted on air as well as in his writing, has created a wise-cracking central computer called Roc not only to help the crew run the ship but also to cheer them up.

Roc is glad to be out of the box and into its “new digs” aboard the circuitry of Galahad. “I like the crew I’m sailing with. I like the challenge.”

I like Roc and I like this book. It makes you think about just how big the leap is from childhood into the scary reaches of adulthood.

Paternal love prevails: The Road
The two main characters in Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, are nameless. As the novel opens, the father and son are simply identified as “he” and “the child.”

Their daily lives are a grim progression from one frigid hideout in an ashen landscape to another as they try to avoid roving bandits, some of whom it appears have sunk to cannibalism.

Humankind seems to be in its last, brutal days. What caused this downfall is unclear and unimportant. One way or another, the world has gone mad.

While some have found this new world too harsh to bear and have escaped through suicide, the father cannot give up on the idea that his son will have a future.

When you are in desperate need of cheering up, this is hardly the novel to provide it. Although The Road is beautifully written, it is depressing enough to make a reader seek the somewhat jollier company of zombies.

The plague: Pride & Prejudice &  Zombies
In Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride jand Preudice and Zombies it is amusing to read how the eighteenth century English heroine, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, and her sisters have trained with a martial arts master in China in order to become efficient zombie fighters. In fact, it is Lizzie’s great fighting skill that the rude yet attractive Mr. Darcy finds so appealing.

Remember the scene in Austen’s novel where the pushy, empty-headed Mrs. Bennet is delighted, because her husband has befriended the wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley? In Grahame-Smith’s version, Mr. Bennet warns his wife that the girls may attend a ball, but must “continue their training.”

‘Of course, of course!’ cried Mrs. Bennet. ‘They shall be as deadly as they are fetching!’

The author provides other funny twists such as when Lizzy discovers that her best friend, Charlotte, has only agreed to marry Lizzy’s repulsive cousin, the Rev. Collins, because she has been infected by a zombie bite and become a member of the "sorry stricken."

Collins is so self-centered that he doesn’t notice as his new wife gradually begins to drool, rot, and slur her speech. It can’t be long, the reader thinks, before Charlotte will be cracking open his head to get at his brains and shut him up.

You can find all this apocalypse and more at the library.

Click here for the original, longer version of this article, "Apocalypse on the library shelves."