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moreadsbooks 's review for:
The Last
by Hanna Jameson
I received a copy of this from Netgalley in exchange for a review.
Detective novels and apocalypse novels are both my cup of tea, so a mashup of these two genres was right up my alley. This is a perfectly decent take on the end of the world - narrator Jon is at a conference at a hotel in Switzerland when he gets the news that the nukes have started to fall, cuing some panicked fleeing and a disconcerting lack of twitter access. The body of a small child is found in one of the hotel's water tanks and since she didn't get there on her own, Jon decides to do some sleuthing to figure out who put her there, even though he has no idea what to do should he find the killer. I found this to be overtly political in a way that I appreciated - Jameson does not make any bones about which "president" has brought to world to nuclear ruin, the European guests who stay at the hotel after the catastrophe become resentful and distrustful of the Americans because, hey, some of them were stupid enough to vote for him, and one of the main characters seems to be modeled after Ann Coulter/Tomi Lahren, even sharing a name with the latter. This took a while to get going for my taste, but the situation escalates admirably in ways readers of apocalyptic fiction should expect and the latter third of the book was engrossing - that is, up until some missed opportunities such ashow are you going to introduce cannibals and then say so little about them? a gross plot wrinkle that doesn't really get explored and a confusing, abrupt ending.
Detective novels and apocalypse novels are both my cup of tea, so a mashup of these two genres was right up my alley. This is a perfectly decent take on the end of the world - narrator Jon is at a conference at a hotel in Switzerland when he gets the news that the nukes have started to fall, cuing some panicked fleeing and a disconcerting lack of twitter access. The body of a small child is found in one of the hotel's water tanks and since she didn't get there on her own, Jon decides to do some sleuthing to figure out who put her there, even though he has no idea what to do should he find the killer. I found this to be overtly political in a way that I appreciated - Jameson does not make any bones about which "president" has brought to world to nuclear ruin, the European guests who stay at the hotel after the catastrophe become resentful and distrustful of the Americans because, hey, some of them were stupid enough to vote for him, and one of the main characters seems to be modeled after Ann Coulter/Tomi Lahren, even sharing a name with the latter. This took a while to get going for my taste, but the situation escalates admirably in ways readers of apocalyptic fiction should expect and the latter third of the book was engrossing - that is, up until some missed opportunities such as