Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: The Last Cuentista

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 5, 2023

I love this book so much the amount of twist and terns remind me of the great fire snake. It is sad but in a go way and I strongly suggest it.

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Chelsea Eastep

both heartbreaking and hopeful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 24, 2023

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Summary: Earth is going to be destroyed by Halley’s Comet. A very select few are able to leave based on status and abilities. The main character Petra is the daughter of two of these select few and she will be traveling in stasis with her family while monitors living out their lives on the ship are watching over them on the journey to the new planet they are being sent to colonize. During her time in stasis the monitors develop a new society, and culture and the original plans for colonization of the new planet have been scrapped. When Petra wakes up she must navigate this new society while protecting her identity and way of life as well as those around her.

I went into this story pretty much blind to what it was about. This was a horrifying dystopian in so many ways. It was not too far removed from our own society and felt just a little too close to home. There were so many emotional moments throughout the story that either forced me to put the book down for a bit or had tears running down my face. That being said I could not leave the book down for very long because I wanted to know what happened so badly. The beginning moved kind of slowly but once it got going I was always on the edge of my seat. This book explores the importance of diversity, creativity and the stories of our history.

Katy

The most gripping book I've read in a long time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2023

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I can't stop thinking about this book or recommending it to friends. I listened to it on loan from my library, but promptly bought a hardback copy because I want to read it again. OUTSTANDING story!

LA in Dallas

The Earth destroyed and stories saved

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 10, 2022

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Apparently Comet Halley and Earth are due to meet on a very bad date in 2061. The premise of The Last Cuentista ("cuentista" is "storyteller" in Spanish) is that a solar flare will knock Halley off course enough to make it collide with Earth. (This is, of course, ludicrously implausible, but it doesn't really matter. More plausible astronomical catastrophes can easily be imagined, so just take it as read that it was one of those and don't get hung up on poor Halley.) Most of Earth's population is doomed, and there is essentially nothing that can be done to save them.

However, it transpires that by 2061 we have a few starships built and just about ready to launch. (By the way, if this all sounds spoilery, look at the publisher's blurb -- you'll see I'm giving nothing essential away that the publishers didn't already reveal.) Petra's family, the Peñas, is one of the lucky few chosen to board a starship and make the several-hundred-year journey to a new planet. The bad news (what, a comet collision wasn't already bad news?) is that on the starship are a bunch of quasi-religious nutcases called the Collective who believe the comet is an ideal opportunity for humankind to start afresh. The Collective takes over the starship and erases everyone's memories.

Everyone's except Petra's. Petra is thus the last carrier of humanity's memories on the ship. Petra always wanted to be a cuentista like her beloved abuelita (Spanish for grandmother).

So, there are two linked stories in The Last Cuentista. The first is a science fiction adventure plot, about which I will say no more to avoid spoilers. The second is about Petra's becoming a storyteller.

The Last Cuentista reminded me of another Newbery medal winner, Tae Keller's When You Trap a Tiger. There, instead of the hokey science fiction plot (don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge SF fan!) we have a rather ordinary life problem that the narrator, Lily, tries to solve by storytelling. There's also a similar exotic feel, in that Lily's stories are modeled after traditional Korean folklore, while Petra's are modeled after Mexican folklore. I didn't feel The Last Cuentista worked quite as well as When You Trap a Tiger, however.

12 people found this helpful

D. Miedema

What a gift The Last Cuentista is!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 13, 2023

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This is a beautiful and sad and joyous and lyrical tale! It is Sci-Fi, but it is also a cosmic story of the insistence of life to endure, against all odds.

Highly recommend.

Kyra

amazing 🤩

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 11, 2023

Verified Purchase

This was an amazing and plot twisting book. 😃🐝 I 100 percent recommend it but I would not recommend it to children under the age of 6.

One person found this helpful

Michele Reed

So beautiful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 4, 2023

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This book was so beautiful and melancholy! The imagery and the mythology are stellar. The love that our memories hold is priceless.

zephyr

Great book - but two errors not worthy of more than a brief mention in an Amazon review

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

Great book. A few minor errors worth recording in cases someone else is curioous about them.

Error 1. In one scene, a character is neutralizing poison. The deadly poison starts with an LD50 of 0.001 ng/kg, then becomes less toxic at an LD50 of 0.0015 ng/kg. Then the (expert) character hopes that "the LD50 will be 0.000 nanograms per kilogram". Whoops.

Error 2. A character (who lives in the future) compares weightless to the Tower of Terror at Disneyland. This ride was replaced in 2017 by "Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!". The books was copyright 2021, so... ...whoops.

10 people found this helpful

Jenna K.

Loved it

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 30, 2022

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I’m not sure what I was expecting but this was such a pleasant surprise. Well written and deeply imaginative. I highly recommend it.

One person found this helpful

Chris from KS

Heartbreakingly Poignant

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 19, 2022

Verified Purchase

This mix of science fiction and dystopia is a thrilling story of loss, the danger of a collective above all else, and the creation of family on a new planet. I could not stop reading.

2 people found this helpful

5 star		69%
4 star		19%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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