I struggle with how to categorize The Last One by Will Dean and I mean that as high praise. Shortly into this wildly imaginative novel, Caroline (Caz) Ripley, aboard a luxury ocean liner with her boyfriend crossing the Atlantic to New York City, finds herself alone. Literally alone. Upon a ship double the size of the Titanic.
Quickly taking on the pitch of a fever dream, this book presents a crazy mystery. Caz frantically begins searching the ship for any other human. Where did all the other one thousand passengers go while she was sleeping? Why did her boyfriend leave her there? Was there some kind of mass mania event? Did something disastrous happen? Supernatural? Apocalyptic? And why does she seem to be the only one left?
All this while Caz considers what's beneath her. An ocean as deep as Mount Everest is tall holding countless sea creatures and who knows what else? Pondering the fact that only five percent of the ocean floor has been mapped (compared with one hundred percent of the moon's surface) adds to Caz's panic and fuels the level of fear. She doesn't know what forces are at work and she's crossing international waters with no sovereign law.
Caz soon finds herself in the midst of something cruel and terrifying. She is faced with extreme challenge after challenge as she navigates through her surreal situation. Faced with hunger, dehydration, extreme weather, and complete darkness, Caz feels like an unconsenting marionette as her new reality unfolds around her.
Will Dean develops the protagonist's character skillfully: Caz's backstory illustrates the irony of her autonomy being taken away and how it parallels her father's history. Another character comments at one point, "this is the same world it ever was. Just a few shades darker". This is illustrated expertly in the culmination of this maddening, unforgettable and oddly inspiring novel. The Last One is unlike anything I've read. I rate this page-turner of a book five stars out of five.
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