Title: The Last Dog on Earth
Author: Adrian J. Walker
Series: N/A
Format: Digital ARC, 368 pages
Publication Details: September 7th 2017 by Del Rey
Genre(s): Science Fiction; Dystopia; Humour
Disclosure? Yep! I received a free, advanced copy in exchange for an HONEST review.
Do you ever request a book on Netgalley and then weeks later wonder why? That's what I did with this book. I don't like dogs and I hate football so what possessed me to request a book about a dog called Lineker and his 90s-Football-Mad owner is beyond me.
But guess what? This book was brilliant! Maybe a higher power was at work there.
The Last Dog on Earth is set in the near future, after London has been desecrated by a war. A lot of people died and the rest moved away from the hostile city leaving Reg, a recluse and his dog Lineker practically alone in Peckham. Reg can't imagine moving. He hates change and doesn't see any need to leave. The fact that everyone else has left is just a bonus.
Lineker loves Reg more than anything. His aim in life is to make Reg happy, but he definitely misses all his old friends on Peckham Rye.
The Last Dog on Earth is written from Lineker's perspective and mainly in diary format from Reg's. I think it worked perfectly. Lineker has a penchant for rhyming slang and loves a good rant. I thought he was hilarious. And it really reads like the mind of a dog; I thought it was a genius stroke by Walker. Even a self-confessed dog-hater (OK that's a bit strong but sue me, I'm cat lady all the way) like me instantly fell in love with him.
You've always been a busy lot, you Sapiens. Climbing, foraging [...], crossing oceans. Waging wars. Looking up. Looking down. But thinking - that's what you do the most. You gaze up and drift away and none of us can guess where you go. F***ing Einsteins the lot of you. Take away all that thought and replace it with smell. Yeah, that's the nearest I can get to describing how it is to be a dog."
There is so much good stuff in this book, I want to throw a million quotes at you. The story really takes the reader on an immersive journey and actually the events themselves are pretty horrific but the humour lifts it immensely. It's a book that makes you think, and that's what surprised me the most I think.
What I probably should mention is the language. Lineker is a Class A potty mouth, and pretty vulgar at times. I loved it, but some readers might have issues with it. In fact, the only thing I can criticise about this book is that I wanted more narration by Lineker. As the story went on we get Reg's POV a lot more and that slowed down the pace of the book for me. But I still couldn't put it down.
Overall, TLDOE is a pretty bleak look at humanity, and a timely, poignant tale considering the world's current political climate, but it's extremely entertaining too. I laughed so much!
Oh to be a dog...
"Then there are the more confusing smells; the ones that are hard to categorise. Like fox. If I get wind of a fox I don't know whether I want to cuddle it, f*** it or pull out its guts and eat them in front of it. It's extremely confusing for me."
"Now and again, once in a blue moon, maybe once or twice in your life, you will meet somebody who makes you wonder, seriously, how bad a life sentence would be. [...] You want to take every nerve in their body, every fibre, every atom, and collect them together into a nice neat box so that none of them can escape, and then you want to piss all over them. [...] That's cats that is."
TLDOE gets ALL THE UNICORNS because there wasn't anything I disliked about it! I'd love to know what Lineker would make of Unicorns...
