2/5 STARS
How’d I find it? Because I greatly enjoyed The Mountain in the Sea, I made sure to see Ray Nayler discuss The Tusks of Extinction in person at Lost City Books.
Why not 3 or more stars? The bones of this story entice: mammoths walk the earth again with some genome tweaking à la Jurassic Park, and the ability to download and upload someone’s consciousness just might save the species. From these strong bones hangs flab: frequent dives into character’s psyches that repeat previous points (Vladimir is infuriatingly one-note) and prolonged waxing on the function of Jacobson’s organ, cells that allow elephants to communicate and remember through smell. How I wish this would’ve been shaved down into a short story! As a novella, The Tusks of Extinction succeeds mostly in pumping readers for an extra $27, which was perhaps the publisher’s goal all along.