A good post-apocalyptic, people-eating zombie novel set in Ireland and on one of its offshore islands. Orpen, her Mam, and Maeve, her Mam's lover, live mostly safely on their small island after a zombie plague kills off most of the world. Maeve trains Orpen on combat; Mam teachers her about medicinal herbs. When Mam and Maeve must travel to the island, Orpen, still a small child, fends for herself. Mam comes back infected, and Maeve forces Orpen to begin making the hard decisions and even harder actions her life now requires.

Somehow I ended up reading two women driven post apocalyptic stories back to back. Ok, so it isn’t really that surprising, given their proliferation and my predilection for that sort of thing, but still…back to back…that’s pretty bleak. Good thing there were two radically different beasts. This one is starts off like The Road set in Ireland and nicely develops into its own thing. The main protagonist, young woman named Orpen, who has been trained to take on all the dangers of this new hostile life since age 7, finds herself on her own for the first time, her two moms gone, and must make her own way in the world. Orpen, despite all her training, up until now, has led a sheltered existence on a small island. Now she’s ready to meet the world, no great discovery really, ravaged as it is by the zombie like skrakes (great name, but don’t you just hate fast zombies) and other survivors (if only she can learn to trust them). So it’s a girl meets world story/zombie apocalypse survival story. And a very compelling one at that. Good writing, fast pacing and very engaging characters guarantee that. There’s a very nice balance of action and drama, one never overwhelms the other. Such are the great pleasures of literary genre fiction. In fact the only thing that might be somewhat frustrating here is that you never really learn a lot about the apocalypse itself. The author has obviously made a conscious choice to tell a small story set in a large world and through it we get glimpses of the grand picture, but not a lot of details. We know the gender balance has been offset toward a women majority and that women have been divided into Breeders and Banshees. But that’s pretty much it. It would have been so nice to learn more about this dystopian scenario. In fact, this book almost read like one in a series of novels set in a specific fictional universe. Traditionally I’m a huge fan of brevity and have a huge appreciation for stories told in under 300 pages (and this book virtually sped by even for its 288 pages), but in this instance it would have been worth the extra time to enjoy more world building, especially from an author as obviously talented as this one. After all, more world building invites more moral complexity. Very good debut, though, despite its occasional stinginess with information. The literary apocalypses don’t often get sequels or at least not with the same reliable frequency as the other, lesser, works, but if this one was to get a continuation, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. At all. So yeah, fans of literary dystopias with a feminist angle, this one’s for you. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Sarah Davis-Goff LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE is an entertaining novel in the unfortunately saturated zombie genre. This will probably be a secondary purchase for most collections, but will be an easy sell to fans of the undead.

The writing was good and strikingly visceral in places, but otherwise there's nothing about the story itself that stands out as being original or memorable enough to really set it apart from other post-apocalyptic zombie novels. I still enjoyed it because I like literary writing and post-apocalyptic stories (particularly about girls and women), but I was admittedly hoping for a little more to happen at the end--more action, more resolution, more worldbuilding, something! I think readers who prefer literary fiction are probably going to be more likely to appreciate this title than genre fans; as someone who reads even more of the latter than the former, parts of Last Ones Left Alive are already getting mixed up in my head with other post-apocalyptic books like M.R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts and Carrie Vaughn's Bannerless--both of which were more solidly science fiction, but also ultimately more satisfying to me personally.

“Despite myself, despite everything. The world ended a long time ago, but it is still beautiful.”

The Last Ones Left Alive was a disappointment for me. I’m sure some will love the writing style of this book, but I felt that it was lacking and did not work for me at all. Even with the flashbacks to Orpen’s past on the island, I never felt like I really knew who she was or what actually happened to cause the world to be the way it was. I never connected to her, and, therefore, did not care about her journey. This is a zombie apocalypse story, and I never felt the suspense or horror. It all felt way too mellow for me even at the end when the action actually starts picking up. The banshees were the one intriguing part of this story line, and they were hardly mentioned. This may be a great read for some, but it did not work for me.

In a post-apocalyptic Ireland, Orphen, who was raised in isolation on a remote island, traverses the country in a last-ditch attempt to find other people in the world after the deaths of the two women who raised her. Having been ingrained with an intense mistrust of men and trained to be vigilant in combat against the zombie-like skrake, when she eventually comes in contact with others, Orphen's social-skills puts her at odds with other survivors.

A thoughtful portrayal of loneliness and an examination of what is most important to hold on to and what can be discarded in the struggle for survival.

Once I started reading, I couldn't put this down, and not just because the atmosphere was so tense that I was white-knuckling my e-reader.

<B>TENSE</b> is the best word for this book. Orpen is never safe, even in the idyllic flashbacks to her peaceful childhood on the zombie(skrake)-free island where she was raised by her mother and her mother's partner, Maeve. And these memories are made all the more tragic by the readers' knowledge that Orpen wouldn't be pushing an unresponsive Maeve through a wasteland in a wheelbarrow unless that bucolic life had come crashing down.

Orpen is brave and remarkably in control despite the complex conflict raging inside her between fearing other people and knowing that the only hope for saving Maeve and finding a better life lies with other people. She has never met anyone other than her mam and Maeve, and finally meeting them brings to life new desires and instincts she had never felt.

And of course, zombies. Lots and lots of fast runner zombies who are bizarrely tough for walking corpses and seem to retain a bit of their memories and reasoning, making them even more dangerous. The scenes of violence are incredibly well-written, and I could clearly imagine myself as Orpen, kicking and stabbing and running for my life.

I loved the unexpected ending, although I'm sure others will hate it instead. There is a nice conclusion to the story, but there remains an opening for further tales, should the author choose to continue.

Recommended for fans of <i>The Stand, The Passage, Walking Dead</i>, suspense/adventure fans.

End of the world stories continue to trend and I for one am loving it. Last Ones Left Alive takes readers on a claustrophobic journey through a dark new world. Will be a great recommendation for library book clubs.