The Last Gifts of the Universe
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'I'd call it required reading for the end of the world. Riley August has written a poignant masterpiece that transcends the death of stars.' OLIVIA ATWATER
'A quietly wonderful, hopeful novel that heals the parts of you that you didn't know were hurt.' JULIE LEONG
'Come for the cat, stay for the story.' SUNYI DEAN
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A dying universe. A search for answers. An adventure at the end of a trillion lifetimes.
Scout is an archivist, searching the dead worlds of the cosmos for clues as to the fate of all these lost civilisations. While exploring another lifeless planet they discover something unbelievable: a message from a witness to that worlds-ending entity thousands of years ago.
But uncovering the story and staying one step ahead of the profit-hungry corporation on their trail won’t be easy. Together with their brother and sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat Pumpkin, Scout must now race to save what matters most.
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'A science fiction novel that will repair your soul with its beautiful, uplifting earnestness in the face of true peril' NADIA EL-FASSI
'I smiled, I cried, and I wanted, desperately, to leave something beautiful behind for the universe' JULES ARBEAUX
'Riley August’s comfortingly contemplative novel left me feeling more hopeful about my place in the universe' SYLVIE CATHRALL
'As sweet as it is sad, as homely as it is strange, The Last Gifts Of The Universe is about the real work of having hope and compassion' ALICE BELL
'Somehow both a hauntingly beautiful meditation on grief and loss, as well as a delightful space-faring romp...I'm honestly in awe.' G. M. NAIR
'It flows brilliantly, with brevity and wit.' ALEX HORMANN
READERS ADORE THE LAST GIFTS OF THE UNIVERSE...
***** 'excellent and thought provoking'
***** 'More books should have judgmental, emotionally supportive orange cats in spacesuits.'
***** 'nearly moved me to tears in several places'
***** 'I was not disappointed'
***** 'the story of how a person's desperate need for answers teaches them how to accept loss'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
August debuts with a thought-provoking postapocalyptic space opera about being alone in the universe. By the time humans developed the tech for space exploration, every planet they discovered was eerily deserted, but without evidence of violence or catastrophe. Now archivist Scout travels the desolate universe with their brother, Kieran, and their cat, Pumpkin, looking for data caches left behind by lost civilizations and hoping for clues as to what happened. On one such mission, Scout and crew discover a message that gives a name to the world-ending entity: Endri. It's the best intel they've found and the closest they've come to being able to save their own people from meeting a similar fate, but a greedy, for-profit corporation eager to steal the information before they can get it in the right hands. The stakes should feel high as they race from one destination to the next, but August keeps things fairly mellow with a tight focus on the characters' internal lives, frequent flashbacks, and excerpts from a data cache about the dead civilizations. Readers who like their space operas on the cozy side will find this hits the spot. Correction: A previous version of this review used the wrong pronoun to refer to Scout and misidentified the source of the excerpts about the dead civilizations.
