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The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley<\/p>\nThe Island of Last Things: quick links<\/p>\n
The Island of Last Things: almost a literary take on Jurassic Park<\/p>\n
With its striking cover, Emma Sloley\u2019s The Island of Last Things follows Camille, a zookeeper stationed on\u00a0Alcatraz at the last zoo in the world. It caters to the uber-rich and is frequently ridiculed by resistance groups. Almost every animal in the world is extinct or near extinction, and at 25,\u00a0Camille hasn\u2019t known a world where animals were abundant. Her life and worldview is\u00a0tipped upside down when a new employee, Sailor, starts working at the zoo. When Camille learns of a secret sanctuary for animals, she\u2019s forced to make a decision: does she want to work with Sailor to free them?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alcatraz Zoo is almost a literary take on Jurassic Park, fit with tourists in safari khaki and\u00a0owners who care more about finance than the lives of people and wellbeing of the animals kept there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley<\/p>\n
The chapters alternate in points of view and timelines. With the present from Camille, and the past narrated by Sailor. The Island of Last Things is captured best in the conversations between our two protagonists. As a good chunk of the narrative is\u00a0based around conversations, it takes effort to make theirs stand out above the rest, and Sloley\u00a0achieves this. Despite the world around them and their increasingly agitated\u00a0community, they are there for each other, with an almost homoerotic kind of devotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Island of Last Things: speculative fiction<\/p>\n
At times, however, the story dragged on with a bit of skirting around the issues at hand. The twist, though understandable, leaves an emptiness in the\u00a0remainder of the novel.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, it should be noted that The Island of Last Things is a literary piece of speculative fiction. There is no exploration of how the world came to be this desolate, nor much of how it functions outside\u00a0of the zoo community. If you\u2019re looking for a gritty dystopian novel, this isn\u2019t it. Rather, it\u2019s a\u00a0character study, a critique on consumerism, classism and climate change. Camille and\u00a0Sailor are just trying to look after the animals, even if their definitions differ on how to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read: U Want it Darker\u00a0review: Murray Middleton\u2019s quietly heroic stories<\/a><\/p>\n While it may not appeal to some, it\u2019s so earnest in its hope for a better world\u00a0that you can\u2019t help get drawn in anyway.<\/p>\n The Island of Last Things<\/a> by Emma Sloley is published by Text.<\/p>\n Discover more screen, games & arts news and reviews on\u00a0ScreenHub<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0ArtsHub<\/a>. Sign up for our free\u00a0ArtsHub<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0ScreenHub<\/a>\u00a0newsletters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Island of Last Things: quick links The Island of Last Things: almost a literary take on Jurassic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,146,85,46,9808],"class_list":["post-8778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-text-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}