Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After listening for an hour and the first 10 chapters, I was still waiting for something truly different or unusual to happen. The split timeline is a nice gimmick, bringing Orpen‘s past and present together eventually. The plot is fairly basic, there are no great surprises and it‘s pretty predictable. I‘m assuming the minimalism is on purpose.
The Road comes to mind. With zombies. Orpen is pushing along a wheelbarrow with an incapacitated passenger, on her way East towards Dublin. Trouble lurks ahead.
What also comes to mind: bleak, depressing, violent and cruel. Pretty hopeless. Orpen’s initial goal seems ominous. The story ends on a more positive note that I expected. I liked it, although it‘s abrupt and pretty much wide open.
The story itself didn‘t really do much for me. Zombies, fighting, screaming, infection, a city that might be salvation or hold human horrors, loss, despair, death and maybe a little hope. All bases covered of the usual zombie story.
There are plenty of plot points and characters that are not sufficiently covered or explored. So, can we assume that a sequel is in the works already?
Good audiobook narrator, with a nice Irish tilt (Anne-Marie Gaillard). She sounds very excited and frantic a lot of the time, which makes it a bit challenging emotionally and hard to understand at times.
PS: I hope you haven‘t read too much of the book synopsis yet, it gives too much away of the story. It‘s Ireland and zombies and it‘s grim, that‘s all you need to know going in.
