This dystopian series has continued to impress me (read my review of The Last Girlhere) and now I have to wait until April 2015 for the third and final book! Unlike most other dystopian young adult books I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot, “The Last Trilogy” offers believable and realistic reactions from our characters when they’re confronted with the end of the world. There’s no overly sappy romance (because really, if you’re thinking about that kind of love in a setting like this then there’s truly something wrong with you), but there are lovely hints of what could’ve been if things were different. There are moments of humour that ring all the more true amongst so much fear and tragedy, as Danby states, “All I know is that crying with laughter is so much better than just crying” (Adams 344).
Danby constantly struggles with her paranoia, (just because your paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you) and from the very beginning, we’re made aware that Danby is precariously balancing on the knife edge between sane and insanity. The novel opens with Danby dreaming about dreaming the world had ended, but her dream logic is skewed as she acknowledges that her loved ones are dead but her greatest concern is telling them about her dream and them thinking she’s crazy. It sets up the tone of this book, Danby questioning her mental state during such horrific events and she confronts her own changing attitudes and beliefs constantly. It’s believable. Danby is forced by her situation to kill and she does so without the epic guilt treatment afterwards that features so much in YA lit. She questions herself and her actions constantly, re-evaluating herself every step of the way and the process is as natural as it could be in this kind of scenario. From The Last Girl into The Last Shot, Danby develops from a girl who can hardly hit a chalked outline of a person with a handgun to being a survivor, armed with a rifle and more than capable of using it.
The blurb on the back had me on tenterhooks waiting for the true natures of Jack and Nathan to be revealed and this, with Danby’s potential mental disorder, had me questioning everybody. Was Jack the evil mastermind he seemed to be in The Last Girl? Or was he a misunderstood hero who was trying to save the world? Was Nathan really a saviour or was he mentally unstable and violent?
These novels are no walk in a park unless this park is ripe with the smell of decay, evil minions hiding behind trees and armed with rifles, and feral dogs ready to rip out your throat. The characters are genuine and their fates are equally so. Sometimes they’re lucky and sometimes they’re really not.
I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of world Danby is left to survive in as the apocalypse enters its second week. You can buy this series here at Bookworld or here at booktopia, or get your local bookstore to order it in!