The Last Latitude
ISBN 9781066799879
ISBN 9781066799855
eISBN 9781066799848
ASIN B0H9CCHC79
I was intrigued by this title from the first time I saw the cover. Everywhere I turned on social media it was popping up. And each time I saw it there was a desire to read it. Over the last decade I have averaged about a book a day. I read across a wide range of genres. This is one of the better debut novels I have read. In my top 10 debut novels for certain. And likely top 5 over the last few years.
The description of this volume states:
“His mother died mapping a place the world agreed to forget. Then he found twelve pixels that should not be there.
For six years, Leo Vasquez has watched the same twelve pixels flicker on a satellite map of Antarctica. Nobody can explain them. No agency will admit they are there. And they sit a short flight from the station where his mother, a cartographer who spent fifteen years charting the continent, died with her last discovery unspoken.
Now he has finally reached McMurdo. And the flicker is not noise, and it is not error. The pattern under the ice has held for exactly as long as his mother has been dead.
What the pattern guards is older than every story we tell about ourselves, and the machinery built to keep it buried has had six decades of practice.
With five others thrown together by chance, and a truth his mother died protecting, Leo has one chance to reach the last latitude before the men who erase things reach him.
For readers of Blake Crouch and Dan Brown: a propulsive conspiracy thriller built on real history, real places, and one impossible discovery at the bottom of the world.”
The subtitle and tag line of the book is:
“An Antarctic Conspiracy Thriller
Some places are buried for a reason”
But they appear in opposite order on cover or title page. Both speak well to the volume. I am always intrigued by books with chapter titles, and always read them first if the volume has them. The chapters in the volume are:
Prologue
1. Glitch
2. The List
3. Armenia
4. Perfect Record
5. The Wall
6. Norwegian Wood
7. Katabatic
8. Blue Dark
9. Five Names
10. Byrd
11. Watchers
12. Uphill Water
13. Threshold
14. The Hot Sauce Rule
15. Zora
16. Forty-Seven Stars
17. Breach
18. The List
19. Forty-Eight Hours
20. The Last Reading
21. Acknowledged
22. Borrowed Altitude
Epilogue: Gerald
Early in the volume we are provided this information:
“The cabin wasn’t really a cabin. It was the cargo hold of a military transport with seats bolted in as an afterthought, and it smelled of cold metal and jet fuel and air breathed too many times by people pretending not to be nervous. Twenty–odd passengers, most of them old hands: scientists, contractors, a knot of matching fleece with a science–foundation logo. And five brand new ones, the youngest on the manifest, thrown together by the accident of the same flight south. Leo had read the manifest twice, because it was there to be read: two research grants – undergraduates who’d out–applied nine hundred and eighty–nine others – a training placement, a support contract, and one line the paperwork called a diplomatic exchange. The manifest said six. The fleece–knot held five. The sixth, wherever she was, was not advertising. Six countries between them once you counted her, though nobody had yet. And every one of them had spent the last six months clearing the same fourteen–page medical packet – bloodwork, dental clearance, a trace of the heart, a psychologist’s careful questions – that the programme made you survive before it would let you anywhere near a place this eager to kill you.”
The youths are:
Leo Vasquez - satellite-imagery researcher from New Mexico.
Maya Chen‑Okafor - grew up at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Darius Osei - chemistry trainee from London.
Priya Nair - research assistant from Chennai.
Callum Reed - Australian participant, athletic and outspoken.
Ingrid Solberg - Norwegian exchange attaché.
And we slowly learn more and more about them as the story proceeds. Yet within a short time they become a team and though there are some conflicts, a bit of bullying, and even maybe some betrayal, they find they are a team and come together when it matters. This line appeared in the story more than once.
“Learn the difference between impossible and inconvenient, Darius. Most of what people call the first is the second wearing a bigger coat.”
And variations on it a few other times. It is an important phrase in the book, and I believe life. When reading it the first time I shared it with my wife, the second time I encountered it I shared it with my youngest child. This phrase is really sticking with me and I have added it to my ‘quotes’ collection.
This is a story about loss, about longing, and about seeing what others do not. It is a quest for truth, even if most of the world wants that truth hidden. And it is a story that will really stay with the reader. I could hardly put this volume down. I read it in 4 sittings over 2 days, and stayed up way, way, way too late on a work night reading.
This is an excellent story! The characters are very well written. The pace is great. And to be honest it leaves you desperate for more. So I can only home this is the first of a long series.
This would be a great read for those who love thrillers, action, drama, or just great reads.
