"It's not looking promising for a quick end to the emergency," a newscaster said, understating the situation to a degree previously unmatched in the history of understatement,... 
 "I'm not speaking of the tedious variations on physical death. There's the death of the body, and there's the death of the soul. I saw my mother die twice." 
 Emily St. John Mandel is one of my favorite writers. Her other books have been great literary noir books which is definitely right up my alley. This one is obviously a bit different as it is a post-apocalyptic book. At first, I was a bit worried of this direction because of the glut of apocalypse tales we have nowadays. But then I read it and remembered, "Oh yeah, Emily is still great at this writing thing." 
 Station Eleven instantly stands as one of my favorite books and the best book Mandel has written to date. What's great about her writing is she can write beautiful sentences and setting, wonderful characters, gripping plot, and a terrific structure for her novels all at the same time. She kind of does it all. Station Eleven has all of these elements in spades. 
 I especially loved how hopeful this book was despite being about an apocalyptic event. It was different as this is by no means a horror book and thought it worked extremely well. It made me think about the world, what we take for granted, and what I would miss most if a lot of the world went to hell. It also made me wonder what I would want to put in the Museum of Civilization. 
 The hype is real here. Mandel is a favorite of mine for a reason. This one gets my highest recommendation.