Book Reviews on a Music Blog

The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's always a great feeling when you buy a new book based on the title and jacket cover alone and end up discovering that it's just as satisfying as you had dared to hope when you purchased it.

For an author's first novel, this is a stunner. Well-written, well-researched, well-paced. To put it succinctly, this book paints wonderful pictures, crafts memorable scenes, and tells a compelling story. Mullen weaves a tale of moral complexity remarkably well: this is a story about self-doubting characters forced to make ethically intricate & taxing decisions (IE: like real life). The book compounds the consequences of well-intentioned but short-sighted choices with the devastating effects of a proverbial act of God, and a cast of believable, developed characters adds great heaps of plausibility to the storytelling.

The historical aspects are impressively layered in, as well: there's much to be learned here about some of the lesser-known dynamics surrounding the first World War. Mullen doesn't simply pick a time and a place for his setting, but folds the truths of the time into his characters: into their motivations, their understandings, and their actions. The result is a very down-to-earth and credible feel for the story - it strikes a chord because it's grounded. Even Mullen's descriptions of what it feels like to be set upon by a life-threatening flu feel familiar (even for someone who's never been assaulted by a homicidal virus).

This book is refreshingly recommendable... to everyone. It's not obscene, it's not hard to read, and it's the polar opposite of an awful book. It's hard not to be envious of a guy striking gold like this on his first foray into published prose: Thomas Mullen hit a home run at his first major league at bat.

Well done, sir.

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