A review by jessiewolf
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

5.0

This book is a mind-blowing ride through extinction, poaching, genetic manipulation, and consciousness-downloading.

We follow Dr. Damira Khismatullina as she fights against poachers to try to save near-extinct elephants until she is murdered. We next meet her a century later when her consciousness has been accessed by scientists who have brought back the wooly mammoth--they have identified her mind as the last remaining resource of knowledge on wild elephant culture, and they want her permission to download her consciousness into a wooly mammoth so that she can be the patriarch of the mammoths and teach them how to survive outside of captivity in Siberia.

Every page is full of intrigue and danger and the stakes are high! This is a short read but every sentence counts, and Nayler really seems to want to make you question the ethics of conservation within late capitalism.