Publishers Weekly
10/23/2023
After exploring octopus intelligence in 2022’s Locus Award–winning The Mountain in the Sea, Nayler peers into the vast brains of the extinct woolly mammoth, brought back to life by futuristic gene-splicing techniques, in this impassioned and impressive sci-fi novella. The story follows the late Dr. Damira Khismatullina as her memories and expertise on elephants, backed up on a hard drive after her death, are implanted into a mammoth, giving its captivity-raised herd a chance to survive in the wild. (“We propose to make you a matriarch,” the scientist in charge tells Khismatullina before her death. “We propose to transfer your mind into one of theirs. You will lead them. You will teach them how to be mammoths. Under your leadership, they will thrive.”) Tracking the herd are a team of hardscrabble ivory poachers and a wealthy philanthropist who harbors dark hopes of bagging a mammoth. The conflict between herd and humans is tensely portrayed, even if the ending is unsurprising. Nayler makes clear which side readers should be on, though he is fair in presenting both the lure of ivory riches to indigent locals and the pressures on scientists to fund conservation through elite indulgence. The result is an uncompromising climate fiction that strikes like a spear to the gut. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
The Tusks of Extinction is an Indie Next Pick!
“Ray Nayler's The Tusks of Extinction is a compact novella that reads like a superb science fiction inversion of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.’” —Amal El-Mohtar for The New York Times
“Nayler excels at writing about ecosystems, nonhuman communities and the dilemmas of conservation. Tusks also includes a sharp focus on toxic masculinity and the sort of power trip that would drive a person into an extreme environment to slaughter a beautiful, irreplaceable creature. The result is both breathtaking and heartbreaking.” —Charlie Jane Anders for The Washington Post
“Nayler’s (The Mountain in the Sea) compelling sci-fi thriller contemplates human greed and de-extinction through science. Highly recommended for readers of ecoterrorism thrillers and climate fiction.” —Library Journal, starred review
“Impassioned and impressive…an uncompromising climate fiction that strikes like a spear to the gut.” —Publishers Weekly
“The Tusks of Extinction is a moving tribute to the beauty of beasts too often taken for granted and a musing on the gifts of nature; human's propensity toward violence and greed; and the hidden layers of meaning found in human interactions with the wild.” —Shelf Awareness
“Fans of biology-inspired sf will enjoy this short novel about human greed, the beauty of mammoths, and one human’s consuming fury.” —Booklist
Praise for The Mountain in the Sea
“I loved this novel’s brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building, and purity of commitment to luminous ideas.” —David Mitchell, New York Times bestselling author of Cloud Atlas
“The Mountain in the Sea is a first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive.” —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
“The Mountain in the Sea is a wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Ray Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices I’ve read in years.” —Blake Crouch, author of Upgrade and Dark Matter
“I came to The Mountain in the Sea for the cephalopods (I love cephalopods), but I stayed for the fascinating meditation on consciousness and personhood. I loved this book.”
—Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice
“A novel that is alert, intelligent, open.” —Nicole Flattery, The New York Times
“[A] staggering book . . . [The Mountain in the Sea] has the clothes of a futuristic, eco-punk or cyberpunk thriller, the guts of a philosophy seminar and the soul of a religious tract.”
—Phillip Ball, New Scientist
“Nayler’s masterful debut combines fascinating science and well-wrought characters to deliver a deep dive into the nature of intelligent life . . . As entertaining as it is intellectually rigorous, this taut exploration of human—and inhuman—consciousness is a knockout.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Less a science-fiction adventure than a meditation on consciousness and self-awareness, the limitations of human language, and the reasons for those limitations, the novel teaches as it engages.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Exciting, cerebral, and surprisingly compassionate, The Mountain in the Sea shines a light on the importance of our fragile ecosystem. Read this riveting novel if you love fresh takes on science fiction or you’re just fascinated by the mysteries of nature.”
—Apple Books
Library Journal
★ 11/01/2023
Dr. Damira Khismatullina is the world's premier expert on elephant behavior in the wild when she and her entire team are murdered by ivory poachers as the last herds of wild elephants are slaughtered for their tusks. It is the end of the elephants' story, and it should be Damira's as well. But her consciousness was uploaded before she died and now has been downloaded into the matriarch of a herd of mammoths, recreated in a lab in a de-extinction experiment. Damira leads the mammoths well, and they thrive, until greed brings new poachers to the taiga to take their ivory. But Damira is much better armed as a mammoth, and she is determined that this time the fight will end differently—even at the cost of the last shreds of her remembered humanity. That so much of the story is told through the eyes of Damira gives it a gut punch of an ending. VERDICT Nayler's (The Mountain in the Sea) compelling sci-fi thriller contemplates human greed and de-extinction through science. Highly recommended for readers of ecoterrorism thrillers and climate fiction.—Marlene Harris
