This is a well-crafted little novella. The consciousness of our protagonist, Damira, has been “uploaded” into a mammoth (!), which scientists have brought back from extinction. Damira had been an elephant activist, an anti-poaching conservationist. After she uploads her consciousness to a vaguely explained political lab, and after her subsequent death, and after the extinction of African elephants, scientists successfully bring back the mammoth. Unfortunately, the neo-mammoths don’t know how to behave like mammoths, on account of being previously extinct. Also, poachers still exist, and they still suck. Damira is the last person alive (“alive”) who had any experience with real elephants, so she must, in mammoth form, become the matriarch and teach them how to survive.
This summary sounds insane, and it is, and what I liked about this book is how much is crammed into a 100+ pages. We learn all about who Damira was, why she became an elephant expert in the first place, the evolution of the poaching trade, the plans for a mammoth reserve and to bring back other extinct species. There are shady Russian government plans that are never fully explained but flesh out the story well (and help support the whole consciousness-in-a-lab thing) and a little psychological examination of would-be poachers in this new era of conservation. There’s a little thought experiment about elephant vs human memory, and what makes a memory real, and human.
I wouldn’t call this an eco-thriller along the lines of Jurassic Park et al. It was a slower, more abstract read – there’s no hard science explanations of mosquito DNA in amber, etc. I’d call it more speculative sci-fi, a quick examination of why humans do such human things, even when we cause irreversible changes, like wiping out a species, or turning a woman into a mammoth. For such a short book, Damira was a very compelling character, and the supporting human characters are well done. If you’re looking for a short, thoughtful story with a conservationist soul, this is for you!
