THE LAST CUENTISTA by Donna Barba Higuera │Review

Hey Bookworm friends, today’s review is for #ScifiMonth2024! I recently read the middle-grade spacetravel tale The Last Cuentista and since it features a generation ship leaving Earth forever, it’s a perfect contender for the One Way Ticket prompt.

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About The Last Cuentista

Synopsis

Once upon a time, a young girl called Petra Peña wanted to be a great storyteller like her abuelita. But her world was ending—a comet was on a collision course with Earth and only a select few, like Petra and her family, were selected to join the journey to a new planet. It will be such a long journey that the travellers will have to be put in stasis for 300 years. When Petra next awakens, she discovers that The Collective has taken over the ship, bent on starting a new history from scratch and she’s the only one left with any memories of Earth. All she has left are her stories but can she find any hope for humanity’s future within them?

My Review

I listened to the audiobook and I want to shout out the narrator, Frankie Corzo, for doing an amazing job making me feel an immediate emotional connection with Petra. I was sniffling by chapter 2, not a common occurrence! Granted, that was also partly due to the harrowing nature of the plot. I mean, I almost felt like there was a slight almost horror-esque tone at the start! A dying world is a lot to deal with for an adult, let alone a child. And I was fully immersed in that mindset, so I just wanted to make sure the narrator also gets their virtual applause!

Yes, this is a dystopian sci-fi story about a dead planet, a generation ship, and the survival of humanity but it’s also at its core a coming-of-age story. While Petra is having to hide her real identity from The Collective, she’s also trying to find a way to stay true to herself while honouring her ancestors. I really appreciated the way Higuera blended Mexican Folklore into Petra’s memories and used it as a vehicle to demonstrate the power of stories, it was rather effective!

“It’s impossible for you to leave me. I’m part of you. You’re taking me and my stories to a new planet and hundreds of years into the future. How lucky am I.”

I’m also convinced that Star Trek fans of any age might find something to like here. Not only are there landing parties to new and strange planets but it deftly tackles a lot of the same themes that Star Trek explores. The Borg-like adversary of ‘The Collective’ and the value of diversity might be a familiar theme, as well as the importance of community and learning from humanity’s mistakes. They might not be brand-new themes but in my opinion, they are evergreen! Not to mention that the excellent representation adds intersectionality to the discussion.

Petra is a Mexican-American girl with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive eye disorder where she has tunnel vision. Higuera put a lot of care into the ways Petra interacts with the world around her due to having poor vision. Especially in this sci-fi context where according to The Collective any divergence from the norm earns you a mind wipe if you’re lucky or else much worse.

“Crime works best, not with overpowering force but when nobody knows it’s being committed.”

I loved being in our MC’s mind; she’s clever, empathetic, and brave but she’s by no means perfect and that makes her compelling. She’s put in an impossible position where she has to make a life-or-death decision, which introduces a question of ethics. Some readers might decide Petra’s choice doesn’t make her a hero but that’s just the thing: she’s not meant to be a hero. She’s a 12-year-old child trying to survive a humanity-ending situation and sometimes there is no such thing as a clean and tidy solution. As an adult reader who’s read a decent amount of middle-grade books, I feel this book respects its audience and doesn’t shy away from delivering heavy themes in an age-appropriate manner.

Final Thoughts on The Last Cuentista & Rating

I finished this book with my heart feeling so full which is a very strange thing to say about a book where the planet Earth dies. But here we are 🤷🏽‍♀️.

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