The Tusks of Extinction

Hardcover, 98 pages

English language

Published by Tordotcom.

ISBN:
9781250855527
4 stars (2 reviews)

When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.

Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again.

The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help. While she was murdered a year ago, her digitized consciousness is uploaded into the brain of a mammoth.

Can she help the magnificent creatures fend off poachers long enough for their species to take hold?

And will she ever discover the real reason they were brought back?

A tense eco-thriller from a new master of the genre.

1 edition

Mammoths have been revived: now they have to survive.

4 stars

A fascinating story of a scientist and passionate elephant conservationist whose consciousness was scanned and later put into the mind of the matriarch of a group of revived mammoths, in the hope that she can teach the group how to be mammoths again in the steppes of Siberia. As the story begins, she discovers the deaths of several male mammoths from hunters. Thus, begins her own vendetta against the hunters to protect her group.

As the story develops, we learn the backstory of the scientist and the state of the world, where elephants have been hunted to near extinction for their ivory and other body parts. While mammoths are protected by the huge wilderness they wander in, they are no longer safe from hunters, unless the scientist, and the mammoth body she inhabits, can push the group into doing something they have never done before: becoming the hunter.

A story …

Review of 'The Tusks of Extinction' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

The author's first book, The Mountain in the Sea, led me to read this, and I wasn't disappointed. This light novel, in a short span of under 100 pages, packs quite a punch. 

The main events deal with poachers, elephants, and their ancient cousins the mammoths. It speculates on de-extinction and narrates cruel events in a human greed impacted future. I was a bit confused at the start, which always happens to me when there are POV changes or time shifts, but by page 30 I was settled in the story and enjoyed a direct ride until I finished it.

The writing feels very well researched, it brings fictional events to a very near feel of reality –of what is and what could be.

Loved it 🧡