Booklist Reviews
More than a century after the brutal, exploitative ivory trade drove the elephants to extinction, Dr. Damira Khismatullina, one of the elephants' fiercest defenders, is uploaded from a backup into the brain of a mammoth. Russian scientists are hoping that they can reform a new ecosystem on the steppe, but their genetically resurrected mammoths aren't forming herds or making needed social connections. The scientists are hoping Damira can teach the mammoths the ways of elephants, helping them learn to survive and self-sustain. But what they aren't betting on is just how angry Damira is—or just how intelligent their mammoths have become. This short, suspenseful novella is action-packed while asking complex, tough questions about humanity: Is a person or creature resurrected from a backup really the same? And what truly is human compared to animal? In just under 100 pages of narrative, Nayler writes a compelling, thought-provoking sf tale inspired by the brutal reality of the modern-day ivory trade. Fans of biology-inspired sf will enjoy this short book about human greed, the beauty of mammoths, and one human's consuming fury. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
Dr. Damira Khismatullina is the world's premier expert on elephant behavior in the wild when she and her entire team are murdered by ivory poachers as the last herds of wild elephants are slaughtered for their tusks. It is the end of the elephants' story, and it should be Damira's as well. But her consciousness was uploaded before she died and now has been downloaded into the matriarch of a herd of mammoths, recreated in a lab in a de-extinction experiment. Damira leads the mammoths well, and they thrive, until greed brings new poachers to the taiga to take their ivory. But Damira is much better armed as a mammoth, and she is determined that this time the fight will end differently—even at the cost of the last shreds of her remembered humanity. That so much of the story is told through the eyes of Damira gives it a gut punch of an ending.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
After exploring octopus intelligence in 2022's Locus Award–winning