You know that feeling when you walk into a room and feel that you might just have missed something? Well, Zoo hasn’t just missed something; in a way she’s missed pretty much everything. The world has changed catastrophically, and she’s been focused on other things.
Having met the man of her dreams and set off on a life together with him, Zoo finds that she’s not yet quite satisfied. She yearns for a little taste of her old life. And so, before they start a family together, she feels the need for one last challenge.
‘The Last One’ begins by focusing on Zoo’s participation in the reality show ‘In The Dark’. As such, we learn about how twelve contestants are battling through an unnamed wilderness on a survival challenge that will test them more than they’ve ever been tested before. It’s a real mix of people too; some who possess the kind of skills that will be vital for their survival but mixed in with others who have clearly just been picked for their entertainment value. So, a bit like Love Island meets SAS Who Dares Wins, but with more clothes and less clashes.
As the action unfolds though, it’s clear that all is not well with the world. People are dying and it has no connection with the action on screen. The only snag for Zoo is that she has no idea what’s going on in the wider world. Such is her focus on the competition and all of the drama that it brings that she is blissfully unaware of the apocalyptic goings on in the wider world. So, while Zoo moves closer and closer to her survival goals, a deadly virus is taking hold of the population and wiping them out in huge swathes. Thousands are dying and Zoo has no idea. And while she fights to win the show and get back to the love of her life, we don’t even know if he’s managed to survive.
‘The Last One’ is action packed and full of twists and turns. We enter into reading about a reality game show – the kind of thing we’ll all have watched time and time again – and waiting for the inevitable conflict, before being slowly drawn into a pandemic, that until recent years was completely alien to us. So, what might well have once seemed far-fetched quickly becomes eerily familiar and is all the more exciting and readable as a result.
I enjoyed reading for a few different reasons. Firstly, I love an apocalyptic scenario. I don’t care how ridiculous it might seem; give me the fact that the world might be ending and I’m hooked! And Zoo’s confusion about the reality of her situation makes this particular end of the world all the more intriguing.
I enjoyed the mix of characters in ‘The Last One’ too and it was easy to visualise them, particularly the contestants on the show. And while I guess it’s not that difficult to write such characters given the amount of reality TV out there to ‘enjoy’, they were well written, all the same.
The twist in the plot also made ‘The Last One’ stand out from the crowd. This could have easily become some kind of ‘Hunger Ganes, lite but the story within the story lifts it away from such a fate, in my opinion. And you can see exactly why Zoo wouldn’t take the hints that keep getting dropped about the fate of the continent. Such is her paranoia about what the show’s editors are putting in front of her that she suspects everything is a trap, so even when a desperate virus survivor tries to join up with her, she is determined to ditch him in order to get to the finish line.
‘The Last One’ is an excellent read, chock full of the adventure and excitement of Zoo’s quest to survive the whole game show experience, while retaining the ever present under current of tension brought by a mystery virus. Nothing too high brow, but a gripping tale all the same, so if you want a bit of a page turner, this could be the one to pick up.
I give ‘The Last One’