Review | A Hero at the End of the World by Erin Claiborne

First Line: Five years later, Ewan Mao sort of, kind of, accidentally became evil. 

A Hero at the End of the World is the Harry Potter ending we really deserved. Not that sugary, "All was well," stuff J.K. Rowling tried to feed us. AHEW (I'm not going to apologize for that acronym) is the version of Harry Potter where Ron (or Neville) killed Voldemort instead, and Harry faded into jealous obscurity.

AHEW is about these idiots + Sophie who accidentally bring about the end of the world. There's Ewan Mao, our obvious Harry Potter replica, who kind of failed at being the chosen one and now works in a rundown coffee shop that sells crappy drinks. Oliver, a stand in for Ron (but you can also imagine Neville), who steals Ewan's chosen one status at the last minute and becomes a huge douche canoe. Archibald Gardner Hobbes (call him Archie), our substitute Draco, who's a part of a magical cult that sounds suspiciously like Scientology. And finally, Sophie, who is Hermione, but a lot sassier.

The characters are really what made this book. Not to say that the plot sucked, but I think it was overshadowed by Claiborne's witty and humorous characters. I loved the fact that Ewan, our sarcastic narrator, was a loser. Not a fake loser who just needs to believe in himself, but an actual loser. Ewan sucks at everything from magic to school to people to life. The bloke's a bit pathetic really. But instead of coming across as irritating, I actually came to care for the niffler. I loved his periodic worries about being tempted by evil:

"Wait one bloody minute," said Ewan. He snatched his hand back. "Are you evil?"
"I'm not drinking evil beer," Ewan protested. He looked at the glass for a moment. "Well, maybe half."

I liked Oliver less, but, as I said before, douche canoe. I almost lost control of my eyes due to the number of times they rolled in my head during his sections.

Archie was another one of my favorites. He's good-looking and spoiled rotten, and he knows it. As someone who used to be deep into the HP fanfic community, Archie is fanon Draco to a T, without the leather pants.

"Of course I don't pay taxes, I'm rich," Archie sniffed.

His crush on Ewan was adorable, and I loved their interactions. Although they were both crushing on each other, Ewan was largely oblivious to Archie's feelings, which made for many comical scenes. I love that their relationship was portrayed as natural, and that there weren't any hangups on them being gay.

The overall diversity in this story was great. A fantasy story where neither of the leads are white and a homosexual pairing is the main relationship of the book? Hell yeah.



Of course, I did have a few issues with the book, mainly the writing. It wasn't horrible, but I definitely think it needed to go through one final round of editing, preferably from a different editor, because I found many typos and mistakes throughout the story. Nothing too bad, but some of them were confusing upon first glance, until you realized that "his" was supposed to be "is." Also, holy dialogue tag! If you noticed from some of the lines I posted, there are tons of dialogue tag like, sniffed, proclaimed, snapped, protested, declared, replied, etc. A lot of the dialogue is followed by non-speaking verbs instead of proper tags. For example, "Alright," he winked." Maybe it's just me, but I get upset when I see things like this, but other readers will probably not be bothered.

Much of the book hinges on the assumption that you've read Harry Potter before, but I think it could still be enjoyable to you non-Harry Potter reading heathens. If you're a Harry Potter fan, you'll get a kick out of all of the references (Mount Unpleasant anyone?) and giggle over the way the characters subvert standard chosen one tropes and the delicious evil:

"What happened to Sergio?" Archie asked, frowning. "Was he fired?"
"It did involve fire, yes," Louise answered without taking her eyes off Ewan.