Title: The Tusks of Extinction
Author: Ray Nayler
Source: DRC via NetGalley (Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom) in exchange for an honest review
Publication Date: January 16, 2024
Synopsis: Goodreads
Purchase Link: Amazon

Why did I choose to read this book? (I usually write this before I read the book.)

The first Jurassic Park movie came out when I was a kid and it honestly knocked my socks off. I am fascinated by the idea of bringing back extinct species. The mammoth is revived in this book AND a woman’s consciousness is able to be downloaded into one of them to guide them in this modern environment? NetGalley had me by my fantasy/Sci-Fi loving heart in just one sentence of the description.

What is this book about? (I usually write this after I read the book.)

This book centers around three themes: valuing expertise, environmentalism (specifically protecting animal species), and how memories work to form who we become. (If you want more of a synopsis, click on the Goodreads or NetGalley links up above.)

What is notable about this story?

I really like it when characters can get the revenge they desire, and Damira gets the chance to get some of her own. She has to become a mammoth first, but she gets it and that feels really good. Considering what happened to her in her former life, it was satisfying to see her take this second chance and use it for good.

At the end of the narrative, Ray Nayler makes a small statement about becoming educated. He states that once you receive an education, you can’t go back to just being. You’ve seen beyond and will always need to understand, analyze, criticize, and know. He doesn’t spend long on this sentiment, but the implication is that an education changes you in irreversible ways that aren’t always positive. It brought me back again to Plato, the allegory of the cave, and it’s just another reminder that sometimes, once you’ve learned something, once you understand something, you can’t go back again, you can’t go home again, or they’ll rip you to shreds. This book is too short to have this final argument hit very deeply, but it did for me just because I am always primed for it.

I have mentioned this about many books I’ve read, but I think that this would be an excellent story to add to a college syllabus. It’s short enough that it can be read within a semester and in a philosophy, psychology, or sociology class you could use it to explore personhood and societal duties between persons. A less stuffy book to explore deeper thoughts and ideas. Its briefness leaves room for the discussion, to fill in the gaps and answer the questions you’re left with.

Was anything not so great?

I come back to books by Blake Crouch in these situations, and I’m sure Sci-Fi authors get sick of being compared to him like YA authors get sick of being compared to the Hunger Games, but it’s important. In Crouch’s novels (Dark Matter, Recursion) the technology that makes the book science fiction is explained and used enough that the reader can understand the risks and rewards. When the characters use the tech, we care about what happens because we understand how it works enough to know what might happen to the characters.

In this story we get like, three paragraphs about a compulsory study where experts must submit to having their consciousness stored in a computer I think? Then we get about three paragraphs that happen hundreds of years after this that put the main scientist Damira’s consciousness into a recently revived mammoth in an effort to teach mammoths how to be mammoths, because Damira was an expert on elephants in her former life.

How does this work? Why does it work? Who developed this technology? This book is so short that it leaves out so much that is needed to be invested in it. If you care about animals you’ll have a head start at investment, especially in Damira’s storyline, but a sci-fi book like this shouldn’t lean on that kind of emotional attachment, it should explore the new paths and pose new questions. Nayler zooms through these 192 pages, writing us through as fast as possible, but at the end it feels like we’re left with the same problems as when we started. While that might be the point, it’s not very satisfying as a reader to spend that time reading only to loop back to where I began.

What’s the verdict?

4 stars on Goodreads – it’s the foundation you can build opinions on, it will expand your mind with questions, but it will leave you wanting. Worth a read and it won’t take you long.

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