Review: The Weathering - Artem Chapeye

Translator: Daisy Gibbons (Ukrainian -> English)

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopian Published: Seven Stories Press, April 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars

"The weathering away of every person is a weathering away inside everyone left behind. Any man’s death diminishes me."

With echoes of The Road and Roadside Picnic, and clear resonance to recent history, The Weathering is a Ukrainian-set dystopian novel that feels timely and timeless at the same time.

The Story:

A young Ukrainian couple spends the summer in a remote cabin in the Carpathian Mountains, to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. After months of no-cell-service and only each other to consider, they descend the mountain come autumn to return to their familiar lives. Only to find out that life doesn’t exist anymore.

Unbeknownst to the couple, an unexplained apocalyptic weather-event lead to the disappearance of the majority of humanity, leaving only small groups of survivors behind. The mountain may have sheltered them from the end, but it cannot save them from the aftermath and what’s left of humanity when the surface-layer of polished society has literally weathered away.

What I loved:

The Weathering is the exact type of apocalyptic story that I personally love; quiet, contemplative and with a strong focus op the people who remain, rather than the apocalyptic event itself. Like our protagonists, we have completely missed the apocalypse itself, and are only privy to the aftermath and “what remains”. This perspective brings a very unique feeling of melancholy and alienation to the book, that works wonderfully with the descriptive atmosphere of the setting itself. Artem Chapeye sets up a world that feels foreboding yet serene, desolate yet filled with people ready to fill that power-void, and altogether liminal in its contradictions. The feeling that lives in empty places that – under normal circumstances – should be crowded with people, isn’t an easy one to capture. Yet Chapeye does so brilliantly, and it made for my favourite aspect of the novel.

The story and theme are relatively simple, but no less effective for it. The titular Weathering has a double (or maybe even triple meaning). It’s the name given to the apocalyptic event that started it all, and it’s a descriptor of what’s happened to the people staying behind since. This book is a portrait of what humanity is left with after society and “modern life” have literally weathered away. It’s a theme that many classic have dealt with, but it feels equally fitting against our modern times, and I loved this current take on it.

The book breaks its heavier moments and themes with a lighthearted narrative voice and the occasional wry humor. When it comes to the audio-narration, the narrator leans quite far into this lighthearted tone, which took me a while to get used to. There were a few times where the narrators tone felt more suited to a comedy-book, even if the narrative was quite serious at that moment. It didn’t bother me personally, but I’d recommend you listen to an audio-sample to judge if this style would be something that might take you out of the story.

As a final piece of critique, I have to say that the ending was a little bit underwhelming to me. A little too much felt left open. I don’t have a problem with an open ending in itself, but here it felt like not even the characters arcs were fully resolved, which left me wanting a bit more.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Tantor Media for providing me with an Audio-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.