Hooray! I finished “End of the Line”! I’m so excited to start a new book. Here’s a summary of the novel, and of course, my own review of it:
“END OF THE LINE”
written by: Rebecca Levene
This is the scariest book I’ve ever read. The story begins with a prologue, as Kate Shelley, a medical student joined a Sux racing game, wherein her fellow med students will draw a line, and the participants will inject themselves Suxamenthoiumm, a substance used as anestesia to induce muscle relaxation, usually to make endotracheal intubation possible and also causes the muscles to twitch. I’m no doctor, but according to what I’ve understood, if you will inject yourself “Sux”, your muscles would twitch, and they will race to up to the drawn line. Who gets first will be the winner. As I tried to imagine some people, shaking and flailing their arms terribly as they race, I could’ve supress a giggle.
Kate collapsed before she reached the line, and she went unconscious. It’s normal in the game, but someting went wrong with the air pump, and she died, but she was revived after few seconds. It’s like she had been dead, but brought to life and she took a part of “death” in the mortal realm. From then on, she started seeing visions, of someone who’ll die.
Kate crossed paths with a group of foreign exchange students, who were just in New York City for an intercultural field trip. We have the twins, Danny and Louise from US, Peter from Germany, Bodil from Denmark, Rinoka from Japan, Mary-Beth, their counselor and James from United Kingdom. Among these teenies, there’s one who happened to posses an unnatural skill. Danny can see visions about future deaths and he’s pretty good in using his senses to spot the warnings. And the warnings were: cold wind, red-colored something (traffic light or ketchup, for example), Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” and a lot more omens.
Danny saw a perfect vision that they’re going to die in a subway crash. At first, he just ignored it, but when he saw the details of his vision were exactly the same details in the subway scene, he warned everyone. The train stopped, and after few seconds, there’s a new one trailing, and would definitely crash on them. They all made it out of the train, including the old man who believed Danny, but Rinoka was heavily damaged. She broke her ankle from jumping off the train, and it slowed her down when they made a run from the train explosion.
Danny saw Rinoka burn from head to toe, but he managed to snatch him from death. Then, a sharp steel from the explosion hurled towards her, but again, Danny ducked and shoved her down just in time. Whoa. How lucky.
The students were slightly wounded, but they needed to admit Rinoka in the hospital. Her whole body was burned, and she was bandaged all over. I think, I prefer dying than to live with deformed features. So then, they met Kate in the hospital, who believed that they supposed to die in the subway crash, but somehow cheated death, thanks to Danny’s paranormal senses.
Rinoka died alone in her hospital room; she was crushed by a bath tub. You know, room on top of hers has a bathtub, which overflowed, due to another patient letting it. From then on, the survivors of the crash started dying in bizarre and weird accidents. And somehow, since Kate was a spawn of death already, she was subconciously involved.
Peter died in a cafe near NY zoo, when fire started, and the firefighters came into rescue. Kate dropped her bag in the ground, and the firefighter who’s holding a hose tripped, and the water blew on Peter’s chest, sending him to the flock of gazelles in the nearby zoo. He landed straight in a pair of gazelle’s horns. It stabbed him right in the chest, finishing him off.
Jack Cohen, the old dude in the subway crash was warned by Louise that he’s the next. He didn’t care so much about it and he said that a hundred year’s life is enough. He said instead of watching out for death, they should be celebrating and enjoying their last moments on earth. They went into a picnic. Wherein Kate ate a banana and tossed the peel somewhere near Jack. This is how everyone died:
Kate and Danny made out, and in case you ask how I knew, ahem, for your information, the book elaborated it all. James and Bodil danced, and Jack thought it was a good idea, so he stood up to ask Mary-Beth to danced. He stepped on the banana peel and slipped. Corkscrew finished him of.
They’re so freaked out so they decided to went back to the hotel. Louise departs from the remaining victim to look for Danny. Everybody encountered near-death experiences but somehow manages to escape.
Mary Beth died when they passed the man repairing the scaffolding which Kate used to bump into every morning. Kate’s routine made the scaffolding loosened and the bolt to gave way. The man repairing it falls and hurls the chainsaw away from him and caught Mary Beth.
James and Bodil headed to the hotel room and due to paranoia, they locked themselves in. As in. James barricaded the door with wood nailed on. They shut the windows and plastered the electric outlets. Hornets, which Kate let out few days ago by accidentally tripping in the base of the sink, jarring it and allowed the water to drip, pestered James and Bodil. As they hysterically drove out hornets, something sets into fire, Bodil stopped it using fire extinguisher. James slipped in the foam, and bolted straight to the window, but managed to hold. Bodil gets chain and tied James around the wrist (the other was limp and useless) and she left him to get help.
The tow truck was close to the building, and when the traffic moved and stopped beneath James, Bodil finds a perfect timing to rescue James. She climbed on the tow truck and held James by the waist as he loosen his other wrist from the chain. Then, traffic was on, the tow truck gave a full speed and James’ arm snapped from is body. Gross. Bodil and James remained on top of it, and a nail blasted the tire, and the truck screeched, sending them in a store. They landed in a rack of umbrellas, all tips pointed in the store window, as if waiting for them. Anyway, it’s a romantic way to die, because you have the love of your life in your arms. But for James, it’s just an arm.
Lou finds Danny and Kate in a warehouse, abducted by a goon. I won’t elaborate why, but it had something to do with Kate’s visions. Lou accidentally kills the goon by crashing her motorbike in him, sending him it a hook wherein meat used to hung. Blech.
They realized the meaning of mortician’ words. It said that if death comes to you, stare it on the eye, and it would no longer wants you. Danny believed that he already died and just revived into life when the goon beat him up to death. There’s one more to die; Lou. The twins agreed with Kate to inject Sux in Lou’s system, to let her experience near-death moments, so that death would leave her alone.
Kate accidentally injected Lidocaine instead of Sux. Lou died, but Kate revived her using Adrenaline. When Lou was conscious again, she said, “It was you, you tried to kill us all, you brought death with you,” to Kate. I wrote up there the details of Kate’s involvement in everyone’s death.
Kate realized that she was acting subconciously, bringing death to the others. She felt remorse and took the syringe for Lou and stab her heart.
Then, the epilogue rolled, and the twins went back to their home. Danny was so amazed of the change in Lou. Lou acts more mature now, Danny thought, as he increased his motorbike’s speed. The traffic slowed down and he hit hit brakes, which he asked Lou to check it up for him while he went to get bottled water for them…. Felt nothing. Then, he remembered Lou, coming back from the dead, taking death with her.
I’ve got one word to describe this novel; GROTESQUE.
Apparently, this novel was inspired by “Final Destination” movies. For me, this kind of novel shouldn’t be read by kids because of the strong sexual content and if you think that JD Salinger was the best when it comes to swearing, you’re wrong. Rebecca Levene outshines him.
I love suspense-thrillers, but not like this one. It’s really gross. And I hate unhappy endings too.
