Sean Click Dystopian Fiction: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller is Out of the World great!

When I was thirteen years old in 1984 I went to the movie theatre with my then best friend Teddy and saw The Night of the Comet.  It was about the aftermath of Earth being exposed to space dust from a comet and  somehow those were exposed and inhaled the dust vaporized and died.  This was about 99.999 percent of the world's population, but of course a handful of people survived.  This movie was focused on two teenage girrls and a truckdriver who survived in Los Angeles.  I must have watched a dozen times since on VHS, Cable over the last 30 years.   The concept facinated me.  And the three survivors had such fun, racing abandoned Italian sports cars, raiding the malls for anything they wanted to wear, and never having to go to school again.  Anyway, this light depitction of a fictional post appocolytic world contrasts significantly with a more introspective, mature, well written version of world in which everyone had caught a disease and diesd that is depicted in a book  I adored years laster as a now fortysomething year old, The Dog Stars. by Peter Heller.      

Hig the protagonist and he along with his loyal dog Jasper and fellow plague survivor live in a compound in Colorado surviving a world wide influenza outbreak that has desimated the planet's population.  It is remeiscent of Cormac MacCarthy's The Road but as a reader it transported me much more to reflection of having to endure such a fate of being a survivor at hunamity's colapse.  I don't think I would want to survive, but like Hig I don't know if I'd be strong enough to fight off the inate humane will to survive either.  He is constantly at odds with this predicatment and life is sad, which is made worse when pre-plague life memories flood his mind.  

The plot is action packed and would appeal to those who love page turners.  This book would definitely be appropriate for older teens who might enjoy a more realistic version of a dystopian society versuss The Hunger Games.   For all readers its  themes of love and losst are relatable even without the devastation of a plague.