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The End of Men cover art

The End of Men

By: Christina Sweeney-Baird
Narrated by: Rebecca Perfect,William Hope,Penelope Rawlins,Debra Michaels,Julia Locascio,Sasha Alexis,Robert Bradley,Sara Lynam,Aysha Kala,Cathleen McCarron,DeNica Fairman
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Summary

Glasgow, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours, he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is how it begins.

The victims are all men. 

Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe. Threatening families. Governments. Countries.

Can they find a cure before it’s too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world - or its salvation?

Compelling, confronting and devastating, The End of Men is the novel that everyone is talking about.

©2021 Christina Sweeney-Baird (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Fiercely intelligent page-turner...at once thoughtful and highly emotive." (Paula Hawkins)

"The stuff that classics are made of." (AJ Finn)

"Brilliant, prescient, unputdownable." (Jenny Colgan)

What listeners say about The End of Men

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Interesting Concept. Transparent, ridiculous story

I was fascinated by the idea of this book, a plague that only infects and kills men, and the social, political and personal upheaval that would result. I was disappointed.

The actual writing and narration are pretty good. All first-person accounts, but there’s nothing wrong with that. But then the real agenda starts creeping in.

It’s pretty clear that the author wanted to make a point about about how terrible men are at everything, and how much better the world would be if women were in charge. It’s almost as if the author has started with this premise and tried to build a story to lead to that conclusion. Pretty transparent, pretty disappointing.

Get the men out of the way and see how great the world becomes when it’s women who are in all the positions of power. Yawn...
Only you just cannot imagine things happening the way they do. The author has taken great unrealistic and illogical leaps to try reach their feminist utopia, in some cases embarrassingly so.

One key premise expressed by one of the characters that served as the foundation for future events was so obviously and fundamentally incorrect I genuinely thought I had missheard it. “10% of the men can only produce 10% of the children...”

Sorry, what?! I’m no doctor, but it’s obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that this isn’t true. A single man could literally impregnate hundreds of thousands of women, if the medical and moral structures would accommodate it, (which they surely would if there was a population crisis on this scale).

But this obviously flawed premise gave rise to women being carefully and rigorously selected for reproduction. It’s pretty clear that the author simply chose to ignore this inconvenient biological reality as it didn’t fit with the female power narrative that was being constructed. And this wasn’t the only example.

What happens when 90% of the men are gone, do those remaining become highly sought after by women? Women forced to compete against each other, as they already do in the real world? No, of course not, we can’t have that, it wouldn’t fit the agenda. Instead, the women simply all decide to become lesbians. Hilarious!

I can say that the narration was pretty good overall, with many of the voice actors bringing their roles to life. But someone please let them know that Penrith is in Cumbria, not Yorkshire, and precisely nobody in Cumbria speaks with a “ey up lad” Yorkshire accent.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Very interesting in the context of 2020/21

This is fascinatingly topical and well written. Each character has their own quirks, sense of humour, way of speaking which retains interest. Although I agree with reviewers that there are a few too many tableaux. I had read that the narration of Dawn was poor and sadly it was worse than I expected. the character is written as fiercely clever and in a key position at the top of British Intelligence. She is also witty and has the best oneliners but the stilted performance put her across on the contrary as slightly dim. it would be worth rerecording Dawn's sections as it spoils one of the best characters

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great idea

This book is very well written and thought provoking, very original.
The narrator has a nice, easy voice and I enjoyed listening. I would definitely look for future books from this author

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Impossible to stop listening

This book gripped me so much so that I finished it in one sitting!
Excellent book, fantastic characters and narration. By far the best book I’ve read / listened to so far this year, likely to be my favourite of 2021

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • VJ
  • 29-04-21

Thought Provoking

A very thought provoking novel. Intelligently portrays the way the world could be affected by a gender specific pandemic.
Fantastic narration - especially by one of my favourites - Cathleen McCarron.
I will look forward to further audio books from this author.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

mixed

loved the first half of the story, found it thought provoking, but it fell away after that and didn't go anywhere. some characters became annoying.
some questionable narration too.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

A powerful yet grim story

This story of course has many parallels with the Covid situation. The incompetent of authorities to deal with the outbreak quickly leading to the devastating deaths world wide, being the most significant. I started out intrigued but am sorry to say that relentless misery throughout most of the book soon became depressing, and distressing. Yes towards the very end of the story a little hope crept in, but for me not enough light to enjoy the End of Men.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

the characters stories

I can not fault this book, I was captivated and interested from start to finish. very good book.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic story

Lived this book and couldn’t wait to hear what occurred next. All the diferrent voices helped bring the individual stories to life

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Too many 'lead' characters

I kept forgetting who all the players were and this wasn't helped by some indifferent actors. But there were some interesting notions explored.

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