enne📚 reviewed The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
The Tusks of Extinction
4 stars
This sf novella centers on Damira, a conservationist who fought back (sometimes violently) against poachers, and whose mind was put into a mammoth's to help them relearn old behaviors and live again in the wild. It's a story about human greed, vengeance, memories, and identity.
I really enjoyed the writing here, but the more I reflected on this story after reading it, the more hollow it felt. It's hard not to cheer along with the book against different types of human greed, and the storytelling was enjoyable; at the end, I don't know that I came away with much more than that.
It's also unfair to critique a book by juxtaposing it with another, but I'm going to do it anyway. Having already read Lee Mandelo's Feed Them Silence it's impossible not to feel like that book tremendously overshadows this one, especially thematically. I think I would have enjoyed Tusks …
This sf novella centers on Damira, a conservationist who fought back (sometimes violently) against poachers, and whose mind was put into a mammoth's to help them relearn old behaviors and live again in the wild. It's a story about human greed, vengeance, memories, and identity.
I really enjoyed the writing here, but the more I reflected on this story after reading it, the more hollow it felt. It's hard not to cheer along with the book against different types of human greed, and the storytelling was enjoyable; at the end, I don't know that I came away with much more than that.
It's also unfair to critique a book by juxtaposing it with another, but I'm going to do it anyway. Having already read Lee Mandelo's Feed Them Silence it's impossible not to feel like that book tremendously overshadows this one, especially thematically. I think I would have enjoyed Tusks of Extinction more had I read them in the opposite order.
