Book Review: The Last Tiger by Tony Black

 

Thylacine book! Yay! I got this one for my birthday. Spoilers ahead.

Myko and his family arrive in Tasmania, having fled their home in Lithuania. Here, Myko learns that the locals fear the "tigers" (thylacines) extremely. Myko himself does not fear the animals and soon develops a fondness for them. But then his father starts to work as a thylacine trapper, and Myko discovers a den of the animals, causing a rift between him and his family to form.

I like the idea of this plot okay, but the execution. I don't know, this book didn't really do it for me. I wouldn't call it bad, I didn't dislike it, but I didn't really connect with it or anything. Despite my obviously love of thylacines, the plot and the characters just really didn't click with me.

I found Myko to be a pretty uninteresting and bland lead and since we're in his POV the entire time this is an issue. I liked that he was passionate about thylacines and saving them, but aside from that I didn't care too much about this character, nor in the rift that forms in his family. His father was an unlikable jerk and his mother wasn't that interesting, either.

I also didn't like how often the characters would repeat each other's names at each other, it made the dialogue feel unnatural and stilted. Having characters name-drop each other in almost every line of dialogue just felt overkill, and almost like it wasn't taking its audience seriously (we don't need a reminder of who is speaking to whom every other sentence!).

I also don't quite like how this book refers to female thylacines as "sluts". I've never seen this term used before in this context (the go-to terms I've seen thylacine females be called is "does" or "jills"), and it felt kinda inappropriate for a book aimed at a younger target audience.

So yeah, this one didn't really do it for me, I'm afraid. It's not bad, but it didn't really do much for me personally.

Rating: 3/5