The Prince & The Apocalypse: 10/16/24

The Prince & The Apocalypse by Kara McDowell (2023) is a road trip / romance set during the week leading up to an expected apocalypse. Wren Wheeler missed her plane home on the day that the world learned of a 12 mile comet headed to a Pacific Ocean impact.

A chance meeting at a closed restaurant pairs Wren with Theo, the Prince of Wales. For deeply personal reasons, Theo has decided to flee his family and his guaranteed spot in one of a handful of bunkers. Instead he has promised to get Wren home to Chicago.

Wren has a week to get from London to Chicago via Santorini. She has to contend with a sprained ankle, society falling down around her, and the difficulties of keeping Theo's identity a secret. Fewer trains are running. Fewer planes are flying. No one is renting cars. What is running is crowded, chaotic, and dangerous.

Throughout all of this Wren somehow manages to keep her sanity and her sense of humor. Despite the darkness there's a lightheartedness to this book.

The book does have a happy ending in that NASA succeeds and the comet doesn't destroy most of the Earth. But there's also a downer, one that results in Theo becoming the King of England.

As the book isn't given a specific date nor are there any contemporaneous pop culture references included, the novel takes place sometime in the near to recognizable but possibly far future.

The novel also happens to sit on the Road Narrative Spectrum. Wren and Theo are a couple traveling together (33). Their destination is uhoria (CC) — their uncertain future. Their route is the blue highway (33) as most of their travel is via car on lesser known roads.

Five stars

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