The Last Girl by Joe Hart
An old fashioned, science fiction cat and mouse story that combines all the now ‘traditional’ tropes of the YA post apocalyptic dystopian genre with a horrifying premise and super hero like protagonist. Whilst the first half of the book is quite tempered and focused on world building, the second half really opens up and has more action than your average Tom Cruise movie.
There are no female babies being born due to a virus that has mutated and started killing adults as well which is not really good for anyone. Apart from the obvious risk to the existence of the human race, with so many men running around the world has no doubt turned into a gigantic idiotic unwashed pile of testosterone, alcohol and excrement. So some clever people/psychotic scientists grabbed whatever young girls, the youngest they could find, locked them up in a mysterious compound and fed them a story to believe in about the fate of the outside world and their duty.
Zoey does not see things in such black and white realities and as punishment for her dereliction of duties she spends three days in a dark box that seems designed to put her through an immense amount of physical and mental discomfort. Instead of breaking her, the darkness gives her a realisation of self and allows her to conquer her own fears leaving her feeling she has nothing to lose and unleashing her inner Rambo. Every instinct she had about the world about her is proved right as she uncovers lie after lie and makes her decision to escape. At this point the superbly written action takes off and it does not really let up for the rest of the book
That’s really it. The Zoey character, and her arc so far, is I’m afraid to say one we have seen before, urged into action to protect someone weaker than her, shooting skilfully despite never holding a gun, surviving helicopter crashes with minor injuries and leading the first stages of what may be a revolution. It seems her biggest challenge is over coming the logic of the situations she is placed in. She is told she is important and the last hope for saving the human race yet is roomed with two girls who want to kill her. She and other girls are punished for breaking the rules by being thrown in a box of absolute darkness that can physically and mentally destroy them. It’s like Ender’s Game but instead of the end goal being the creation of a wise young man who will save the human race as he has learnt too never rely on anyone else but himself, here Zoey is just subjected to shitty management. Any idiot would separate them entirely, especially as the abundance of space is constantly referenced, but no this group decides to punish the aggressor and then let them hang out unsupervised later on.
Hart seems to give a bit of a nod to the fact that he is checking off the boxes of what makes these books so popular at the moment even going so far as to have one character introduce themselves like this “I guess you could say I’m an old man living in the mountains’’ which means he’s given us the wise and skilled parental type and that would make Zoey ‘Katniss/Tris’, the ARC is W.I.C.K.E.D. and well you get it.
The Last Girl starts with a great idea and some fantastic action sequences but draws too much from the already established series that are now dominating our cinema screens without bringing anything truly original to the table. That being said there is every chance this could be the new generation’s “Hunger Games”. 3/5
The Last Girl - Book One The Dominion Trilogy by Joe Hart
Published by Thomas & Mercer
