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TheAussieZombie

The Aussie Zombie

Zombie, post-apocalyptic and dystopian books are like shoes - you can never have enough.

Last Light (Last Light #1)

Last Light - Alex Scarrow

When it comes to post-apocalyptic novels, the ones I find I enjoy the most are the ones that are very real scenarios. Not that zombies or alien invasions aren't realistic scenarios (yep, I had to say that!), but natural disasters or man-made disasters such as the storyline of Last Light are the ones that scare me the most.

I first read Last Light in 2009 or 2010, but I've always wanted to go back and revisit it again, because as well as being entertaining, it's a book that carries a message - the dependency of the human race on oil is huge, and it's complicated. It's not something I give thought to often, but imagine if the oil supplies were suddenly cut off - would the world band together or would it descend into chaos?

Last Light focuses on one family, the Sutherlands, in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the worlds' oil extraction and distribution process. Andy Sutherland is something of an alarmist, but the reasons behind his paranoia are actually justified - he knows just how precarious the world is in it's dependency and has no doubts on just how catastrophic the loss of oil would be.

Last Light is told through multiple perspectives, and this is where it lost me a little. Whilst the storyline of Andy in Iraq is vital to the story, it wasn't the part that I was particularly invested in - I liked the focus on the collapse of the British economy and infrastructure far more, and particularly the perspectives of Andy's wife, Jenny and daughter Leona as they witnessed the spiralling events first hand.

The characters all feel very real - the Sutherlands are normal, everyday people with normal, everyday problems and perspectives and that makes them incredibly likable and I was also able to sympathise with them as they tried to find each other whilst surviving some scary situations.

There are also mystery elements in Last Light that opens the appeal up to more readers than just the apocalypse lovers, and although it wasn't the type of storyline that I normally enjoy, it was an essential part of the story that I found very intriguing.

What Alex Scarrow does very well in Last Light is paint a picture of how a nation, and a world, could collapse so suddenly into chaos, and there are moments of real tension and terror as humans turn on each other for a bottle of water or a mouldy slice of bread. It's not always clear how events are going to turn out, and that makes Last Light an incredibly readable and scary book.

Source: http://www.theaussiezombie.com/2013/07/review-last-light-by-alex-scarrow.html