The Last Hour of Gann

First read by this author.

Do not let the cover fool you, in any way shape or manner into what this book is about. ( I think it needs a cover change – a cover more deserving of such a brilliantly, deep and movingly written book )

LONG LONG LONG READ… this is not a single book. It’s more like 5 books. Don’t let that stop you from reading it!

I’m not even going to attempt summarising this book…

Lots of triggers so don’t read if that’s a problem for you.
The book gripped me from the start. The author has a very ‘naked and honest’ style of writing, all of the worlds negatives and downfalls can be found in this book. They are all there, pride, hate, lies, lust, dispare and pain. The author doesn’t hold back from showing the darker sides of human and ‘alien’ nature. Unsurprisingly they are not very different from each other.

I can honestly say the charachters were all flawed, as most people are, which was refreshing in its honesty. Yes even the hero and the heroine…but they were likable. There were some beautifully touching moments…. BUT It’s not a light a fluffy read. It’s not romantic read. It’s a long hard emotionally bumpy, shocking and juddering ride. At times I found myself re-reading parts that I had just read to make sure I had understood what had happened.

The heroine has the hardest journey of all and in SOME aspect it’s deserved, the trust she places in others is thrown in her face time after time ( SCOTT IS A MASSIVE ARSE and he bites hers numerous times and she does NOT learn ) and I hated that his comeuppance wasn’t sooner.

If you like a harrowingly sad dystopian read then this book is a winner. I enjoyed it, I don’t regret reading it. I like to mix up my reading and surf the darker waters.

As it stands I will be checking out the authors other books because….( just after I’ve hugged a few kittens and eaten my weight in chocolate) WOOOOW this author can write

Ich weiß nicht wirklich was ich sagen soll. Ich bin geplättet. Dieses Buch hat mich auf eine phantastische Reise mitgenommen. Ich habe mich mitgefreut, mitgelitten, mitgefiebert, mich mit verliebt und einfach mitgelebt. Es ist eine lange Reise, die langsam beginnt, was mich am Anfang etwas gestört hat, aber im Endeffekt dazu beigetragen hat, dass ich die beiden Welten besser verstehen und mich richtig einfühlen konnte. Für mich als Nicht-Muttersprachler der englischen Sprache waren manche Wörter nicht einfach zu verstehen. Doch mit der Zeit, als ich mich auf dem neuen Planeten eingelebt hatte, hat sich auch dies gelegt 😉
The Last Hour of Gann ist keine einfache Geschichte. Amber erlebt viel, eine slow burn love story, aber leider auch viel Leid und Verrat. Doch natürlich, so viel wage ich zu verraten, findet sie ein happy end mit ihrem Meoraq.
Die Geschichte birgt auch tiefgehende Botschaften und Themen, wie Religion, Vor- und Nachteile technischen Fortschritts, was ist gut und was ist schlecht, was ist erlaubt, wie weit darf man gehen, um das Wohl anderer zu schützen…?

Wer also keine Scheu hat, sich auf eine wirklich lange, aber richtig schöne, interessante, tiefgehende Geschichte auf einem fremden Planten einzulassen, sollte sich dieses Buch nicht entgehen lassen. Ich habe es geliebt und The Last Hour of Gann wird sicher nicht mein letztes (wenn auch erstes) Buch von R. Lee Smith gewesen sein.

A profoundly philosophical sci-fi space opera (and an epic love story)

What a revelation this book was: extraordinary, fascinating, memorable, different, and at times uncomfortable and painful to read. It is epic and epically long, but I couldn’t put it down and I read it just over one weekend, almost without break. It’s also difficult to pin down with regard to genre: it’s speculative fiction, sci-fi space opera, it’s an epic love story, It’s a quest narrative and it’s also an Entwicklungsroman.

Before I go into the review proper I would like to address the criticisms that have been levelled against this book with regard to the depiction of sexualized violence against/rape of women and the conclusion that this somehow makes the book anti-feminist. In my opinion it’s actually a profoundly feminist book. It is true that the heroine (and other women) in this book are not only subjected to sexual harassment and general denigration, but also rape and sexual slavery (of various forms). But actually the depictions of these practices serve as a critique of not only of the human community, but also the alien patriarchal, male-centered society (in many ways reminiscent of past, and sadly also contemporary, social/ethnic groups). It’s a strong indictment of the kind of toxic masculinity that is still prevalent in most of society. And in contrast it makes the accomplishments of the heroine (and other female protagonists in the book) all the more remarkable, because they succeed (largely on their own, but also by forming a supportive community of women) to break the strangle-hold of male dominance. Despite all the difficulties and almost insurmountable challenges that Amber faces, she manages to overcome them all and in the process not only to save herself, but also the hero. In the end it’s her and her caring, community-based approach that triumphs, and not only in the physical sense, but – almost more importantly- also spiritually.

The story starts on earth, with the (anti-)heroine Amber, living in rather precarious circumstances. It feels almost dystopian; Amber is stuck in an undemanding job as a factory worker, edging out a living with her sister and mother, who is a sex-worker. But when her mother dies, she and her sister are facing losing their small apartment and becoming charges of the state, I situation of which they will never be able to get out of on their own. So when the opportunity presents itself to become part of the vanguard of a space exploration team that is to colonize a new planet many light years away, Amber convinces her whiny sister to hire on. Only she is too fat and hence has to lose a lot of weight to qualify for the program. They do manage to get on the space ship, but on route the ship gets into an asteroid field and is damaged seriously as a result of which is crash-lands on a completely foreign planet (which at least has an atmosphere that can sustain human life), but there are very few survivors.
In this hostile alien environment Amber really starts coming into her own through her common sense approach, but not everybody in the group of survivors likes her “know-it-all” attitude, which is only made worse when it turns out she mostly is right. The handful of would-be-colonists that survived the crash soon come to realize that surviving in a hostile, alien environment will tax not only their ingenuity, but also the cohesion of their group. That’s when Meoraq, the alien hero of the novel comes across them.

What really struck me was how well the author succeeded in conveying the complete otherness of the hero through her prose, his thought processes and his elaborate belief system, which he constantly reflects on and later on even starts to question. But not only his inner landscape is completely alien, but also his appearance. Amber calls him lizardman (mostly to herself, but sometimes also to his face, though over time it becomes an endearment). Though he clearly belongs to an intelligent, bipedal species, he is pretty far from human: instead of flat face he has a snout and he is covered in hard, black scales. Also, in his society he is a member of the highest caste, sort of a warrior/judge cross, who basically can do whatever he wants. But though he is among the very privileged and from time to time behaves in an entitled way, he is also governed by an inner core of integrity and decency. When we first meet him, he just about to learn that his father has passed and as the oldest son it is incumbent upon him to take over the position as leader of the family. Only he doesn’t feel quite ready, so he takes it upon himself to go on a self-chosen quest and that is when he comes across the creatures from another planet. And although he finds it rather bothersome, he soon realizes that they would die without his help in the harsh wilderness of his planet.
So, under the lead of Amber who tries to learn his language and teach him theirs, Meoraq takes the strange humans (albeit a bit reluctantly) under his wing. But that is just the beginning of the tensions in the group of the colonizers and a whole host of other difficulties.

So ostensibly the book is about space travel and exploring/conquering new worlds it’s really a critique of the human condition, about the state of our society and our values and religions. In the context of the clash of two societies and a love story it explores and exposes contradictions in such topics as gender inequality, class-systems, religious fanatism, the uncontrollable consequences of biological warfare. It examines existential questions of what is right and what is wrong, of what makes good leadership, of what is permissible in the name of survival (one’s own and that of one’s people) and the inherent injustice of inequality.

What I really marvel at is the prophetic nature of the figure of Scott. Here you have a self-proclaimed leader without any qualifications. Out of desperation and resignation the rest of the group follow him. Although clearly impossible (with their spaceship gone) Scott promises to find a way back home and the others choose to believe his empty promises. It is quite chilling to see how far his followers are willing to go and what atrocities they will commit, despite knowing that they can’t go back to where they have been (not that their prospects back home were all that rosy, otherwise they wouldn’t have left in the first place). The only person looking forward and to make a future on this new planet is Amber, but her ideas and proposals are constantly rejected and reviled (partly because she is a woman). It is really chilling to realize that this book was published 2014.

Without question this is one of the top 10 books I’ve read in 2019. It continues to resonate long after I have finished reading.

Don’t be daunted by the length of this book. Yes, it’s long, but there is no way that any single word could be cut out of this book without damaging it. The world-building is simply amazing. I was completely transported to a whole new world and it was a world that I discovered as Amber discovered it, in a completely organic manner. It was so awesome.

There are so many thing about this book that I liked but one of the things that I liked is that neither Amber or Meoraq are perfect. In fact, they are so not perfect, they are sometimes almost completely unlikable, which is amazing when it comes to the hero and heroine. Amber is pushy, bossy, annoying, and sometimes a know-it-all. It’s no wonder that the rest of the survivors don’t always like her. Of course, the fact that Scott pushes it and makes the problem even worse doesn’t help. Meoraq is rude, angry, a zealot, and arrogant. It’s no wonder that many of the survivors don’t like him and are scared of him. I would be too, if I were them. Then again, I wouldn’t have been sitting around on my derriere the way that most of them were doing either. Amber was right, the more of them that would’ve known what to do, the better off they would’ve been. Meoraq would’ve been less angry with them if more than just Amber were pulling their weight.

Speaking of the humans, not one of them, outside of Amber is remotely likable. I wanted Nicci to die a fiery death from about the 10% mark, and Scott from practically the first time we saw him. He was a smarmy pr1ck, a bully with a nasty streak, and a potential murder in so many ways.

The book is a slow, long burn, but it’s a good one. It’s an amazing ride with a spectacular and interesting world to visit, complete with a whole new theology, a caste system, and a different lifestyle. It’s definitely worth every second of reading it.

What a real pleasure to get such a hefty book, you could feel the disorientation of being cast adrift on an alien planet, the good crazy, bad crazy and ugly crazy right the way through the characters. Big satisfied sigh at the end of this marathon, mammoth read!

I really liked the comedy/fantasy/spiritual aspects of this book and as far as the latter theme goes, the way that the reader is left to their own spirituality without taking anything away from the story.

Happened to be listening to Sam Smith ‘Stay With Me’ when Amber was in the 5 day drug induced attempted murder. The wailing chorus really felt like a heart-string puller, a great backing track for Moeraq’s feelings during that time.

There were only two things that spoiled it (a teeny, tiny bit, mind) for me:

The incessantly stupid, reckless, feckless, whiny almost 2 dimensional humans other than the heroine. Oh my dayz! If I were Meoraq I’d pray whilst slaughtering the lot. Nicci first. You just knew she would be a real drag and a total drain and then to top herself out of spite. Who knew?

Amber’s attitude to danger (often cited as her ‘independent spirit’) Why do so many foolish women seem to end up abducted or on crashed spaceships and in far flung reaches of the galazy anyway??

In spite of this, overall there have been very few books that have made me cry-laugh and laugh-cry. This is one.