Say the term “science fiction” and it conjures up images of robots and space rockets and the like. After all, the true joy of science fiction is its capacity for variety. The worst thing you can do to your dystopia is to let it grow stale. But I feel like I’ve been given the last glass of water on Earth and I’m just gulping it down while everyone watches. I’m supposed to feel happy my parents were chosen to go to the new planet, Sagan. This is the story my mind will keep of them. They’ll clink their clay mugs, take a long drink, and lean back shoulder to shoulder against Tía Berta’s one-hundred-year-old pecan tree. “We won’t have another Christmas to keep this for.” Lita will make an even bigger pour into Tía Berta’s cup. “I suppose you’re right,” Tía Berta replies. “Berta! This isn’t the time to be stingy.” Lita would tip the brown glass bottle, pouring rich liquid of the same color into her coffee cup. Instead, I picture Lita and Tía Berta lying under the red-and-black fringed blanket, drinking coffee with “secret sauce” as they watch the nagual snake come home. I don’t want to imagine them being so afraid they’d try to hide from something they can’t hide from. You’re taking me and my stories to a new planet and hundreds of years into the future. Should replace The Giver in the literary cannon/school curriculum for dystopian fiction. The Last Cuentista does an outstanding job at demonstrating that diversity, culture, heritage, language, and stories are all the good bits of humanity.Īll in all, easily my new favorite middle grade book. She perseveres through a lot of loss (tbh this book has a pretty solid core of sadness) and ultimately has enough hope and tenacity to buoy the whole god damn human race. Petra is a phenomenal protagonist she’s brave, smart, and she’s got a lot of heart. The Giver who? The Last Cuentista deals with the same themes via dystopian fiction, but sprinkles in Mexican folklore to make an argument for storytelling. I have not come across too much middle grade sci-fi in my experience as the target demographic for books or as a bookseller (though granted, the genre isn’t my specialty) and this novel is not only another book to contribute to a limited niche, it’s like the freaking crown jewel of the whole genre. When Petra awake, she finds herself a servant to the collective with only her cuentas to save her and the remaining “relic” (OG) humans. Petra and her family of highly trained scientists are put in status for the 300 year journey, but the some of the monitors who will live out their lives on the ship carrying for those in status form the Collective-a society that evolves physically and erases the history, culture, and stories of humanity. Petra Peña is a young girl who embarks on a journey as humanity’s last hope when Halley’s comet officially heads on a collision course with earth.
The Last Cuentista is S T U N N I N G, both as a physical book and as a story.
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