#BlogTour The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird

 

It's my turn on the BlogTour for this exciting new dystopian story - The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird.

About the Author

About the author: Christina was born in 1993 and grew up between London and Glasgow. She studied Law at the University of Cambridge and graduated with a First in 2015. Christina works as a Corporate Litigation lawyer in London. The End of Men is her first novel.

Follow @ChristinaRoseSB on Twitter or on Instagram,

About the book

Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a patient with flu-like symptoms. Within three hours he is dead. This is how it begins. The unknown virus sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. The victims are all men.

Dr Maclean raises the alarm. But by the time the authorities listen to her, the virus has spread to every corner of the world. Threatening families. Governments. Countries.

Review

I wish - just for myself - this book had a before and an after. A read and review of this story before the Covid pandemic and my review now. I can imagine the before would have thought it a brilliant concept, but probably not something we would realistically ever see in our lifetime. Now it's a whole other ballgame isn't it. A lot of it comes pretty close to what we have experienced and are experiencing at this moment in time.

Dr Amanda Maclean recognises the significance of a deadly fast-spreading flu-like virus that hits her emergency room one day. All the victims, both young and old are male. She tries to warn official channels and finds her concerns blown off as the virus spreads to other parts of the country. Ignoring and dismissing her comes at the cost of many lives.

Rather cleverly when you look beyond the virus and a little closer at the implications of the gender specific nature of said virus, it shines a spotlight on certain downfalls of a patriarchal society. One of those things is the constant silencing and gaslighting of women by men. But perhaps the most poignant point of all, whether one gender needs the other to survive or is a small minority sufficient and does history change when it's no longer being written by men for men.

I was intrigued, and possibly a tad concerned, by the way the author saw the virus changing the world. The policies, laws and procedures put in place to contain it. The necessity of vaccination and the lack of vaccination then dictating the steps forward in regards to survival. Very much an eye-opener.

It's a riveting dystopian premise, but perhaps more so because fiction has become melded with too much reality in the last year or so. Very much an author to watch.

Buy The End of Men at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : The Borough Press pub date 29 April 2021. Buy at Amazon com. At Waterstones.