In our present day, a woman named Damira is fighting a never-ending war against elephant poachers in Africa. Far in the future, after elephants have gone almost entirely extinct (there are just a few Asian elephants left in captivity), scientists have brought back woolly mammoths and have reintroduced them to their previous habitat in Russia, where they are led by a matriarch named Damira. But when species come back, so do their predators, including poachers...
For a very large portion of this book (more than 30 pages), I was VERY confused... until the a-ha moment when everything made sense and the story became infinitely compelling. Nayler has a track record for writing "angry endangered animal taking it out on humans" stories in a very compelling way — his novel, The Mountain in the Sea, had me firmly on the side of the hostile octopus species — and this novella is no exception. I do hope, however, that this isn't the ONLY type of story he writes, and that he shows off those skills soon, so he doesn't get a reputation as a one-trick pony. Because his writing is great and it would be a shame to have him swept under the rug.
No comments:
Post a Comment