Book #18 of 2017: The Last One

[thistlechaser]

Before I get to the review: WTF LJ? Under the tag selection window is now "Feel free to use hashtags! The # symbol is precedes the tag followed by one or more keywords that will properly lead individuals to conversations and discussions pertaining to a specific topic or theme." How is that different than how tags work now? Also "is precedes"?

#book review

Edit: AH HA! You can use them in the post now, not just in the tag field. That's pretty cool. (Too bad about the space issue though.)

Edit 2: Oh, it links to everyone's use of that hashtag, not just your use. That's a whole lot less cool. How is one to know if everyone is going to use book_review, BookReview, Book-reviews, or something else?

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The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I'm so glad to be done with this amazing book, because now I can sleep. Every single night since I started it, I've stayed up way too late reading it. That never ever happens! Usually I'm good about getting to bed on time, but this book was so good I just could not make myself put it down.

Set in current times and the real world, a woman gets cast on a reality TV show. One of the "cut off in the wild" ones, like Survivor, but without voting people off. The only way to get off the show is to quit, and so the show was really hard on the players to try to force them to tap out. As reality shows tend to be, the producers not just were hard physically on the players, but manipulated without care to their feelings to get a good show.

The author knows just how reality shows work, that viewers really don't care about the players' names, they just need one defining trait for that person. So the main characters were people like Air Force, Engineer, Waitress, Black Doctor, etc. That alone made me fall in love with the book -- it was so reality TV-ish! They were full, complete, interesting characters, and so calling them by just that one trait further demonstrated how messed up reality TV can be.

So, while the players are all trapped out in the woods, alone except now and then a cameraman, something bad happens in the real world. (I'm not sure if the something bad is a spoiler or not, so I'm going to be vague just in case.) The plot of the reality show alternates with plot about the something bad, and it comes together perfectly to show how a person can mentally break. The show manipulated a woman so badly that her brain started to fool her about what was really happening with the something bad. It was SO COOL, such a perfect, believable, realistic glimpse at how someone can go insane.

For all that seems like a dark story, mostly it wasn't. The first three-quarters of it really weren't all that dark. The end of it got dark and depressing (which makes perfect sense, with the something bad). The ending of the book didn't work for me, but I'm not sure why. I wouldn't at all let that ending stop me from recommending this book though! (Especially since I was exhausted and distracted by RL while reading it, so I might not have enjoyed it for non-story reasons.)

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

I haven't tried out LJ's global tag thing yet -- although I noticed it creeping in because my phrases in the text that said something like "point #4" suddenly turned into links, quite annoyingly -- but that's kind of neat. Tumblr has global tags like that, and it definitely makes it easier to search out posts about specific topics -- although, as you say, there are A LOT of different version of the same tag out there, e.g. "song of ice and fire", "ASOIAF", "a song of ice and fire", "ice and fire", "got", etc. etc. -- and you either have to tag all of them, or search all of them -- or it's no different than personal tags. But for smaller fandoms it could be a good thing, because it's so hard to find people... especially after LJ screwed up the site search.

I'm not all that much into reality TV, but this sounds like an interesting book, and especially an interesting approach with the character names.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You're right, it seems a lot like Tumblr's tags. It will be nice to try to find other people through them!

After posting my review, I checked out Goodreads. Seems like people who aren't that into reality TV liked it less than those who are. (Which makes complete sense.)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Tags for everyone, and also tags for your own personal LJ is actually a lot how Tumblr does it, which is, actually, kind of useful, overall, despite the general problem of people tagging differently than you would.

ETA: After following the tag you used, I wonder if there's a way to filter out Russian results. Not that I object to Russia itself or the Russian laguage, it's just not mine.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Good point about the Russian thing. Since I can't read it, that's little use to me. But otherwise, yeah. The more I fool around with them, the more okay they seem. And anything that keeps LJ more active is a good thing!