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The Last Man

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About this listen

The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late 21st century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction.

Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature.

Public Domain (P)2013 W F Howes Ltd Classics Middle Ages
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Persevere. When you get to the end it'll be like scaling mount everest. Is quite poignant though given how we are killing our planet.

You need patience

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This is probably the worst book in my library. It is twenty hours of irrelevant dribble about how much all the main characters love each other, pages and pages of pointless dialogue that doesn't drive the story forward in any way at all.

It's set in the far future but Shelley has put no effort at all into what that future might look like, it might as well have been set in the eighteenth century as the tech is identical.

The novel should have been about a quarter of the length it was and then it might have just about been tolerable.

It's impossible to imagine this is the same author that brought us Frankenstein. I suspect the hand of heavy editing went into making that one the masterpiece it is.

Avoid like the plague.

Badly in need of editing

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