The Last Day is a thriller set in a dystopian future, where the earth has stopped turning, leaving half the world in darkness and the other half in permanent light. My favourite aspect of this book was the brilliant story world that Andrew Hunter Murray has created. There are themes of corruption and cover ups by those in power; the ills and deprivation in society; and the sinister nature of state control, including the curbing of press freedom. I am familiar with many areas of London that feature in the book and I loved the way that Hunter Murray depicted these places in this imagined world. It made it all the more relatable and terrifying to imagine. It was this that made The Last Day particularly enjoyable to read.

The story of Hopper and her quest to uncover the truth about what happened to Edward Thorne is gripping and while I didn’t get drawn into the character voice, her story ensures a pacy plot in a conflict of good versus evil. I found the ending satisfying enough to complete the novel, yet it leaves an element of ambiguity about what happens next.

Overall I found this a a clever and original thriller that makes a highly entertaining read.

Edge of the seat, thriller with unpredictable twists. Set in the not too distant future, the world no longer turns which means only half the globe has light, and only light. The other half has only dark. Ellen Hopper is a scientist who lives on an oil rig and studies the currents and how they have been impacted by the new global environment. Her old lecturer is dying and desperate to get hold of her. They fell out in the past and Ellen wants nothing to do with him. But the circumstances around her death make her curious and unsuspectingly she opens a lethal can of worms.
A definite page turner with a great pace. With these kind of stories, I love to see how the author has thought through the consequences of the new environment. The author did a great job of this, considering all angles from food, transport, defense and social perspectives. I really enjoyed this and despite a busy schedule, consumed in record speed.

An intriguing, twisty dystopian thriller.

In The Last Day, Hunter Murray takes us forty years into a terrifyingly real future. Climate change hasn’t wrecked the planet, instead thanks to an inopportune meteorite the earth is moved out of its orbit, no longer turning as it revolves around the sun. Half the planet is stuck in constant darkness, half in constant daylight. Even being on the light side of the planet doesn’t guarantee survival, many places have turned to arid desert, disposing millions and turning them into desperate refugees, ripe for exploitation by luckier nations – those that survive. The UK is relatively lucky, there’s not quite enough food to go around, the political regime’s a practical dictatorship and lives are grim but it’s hanging on in there. For now.

Hopper is a scientist, living out on an old oil rig monitoring the currents, happy to be away from the mainland and people, when a letter from her old university tutor disrupts her calm existence. Why are the government so insistent she visits him before he dies? What’s the secret he’s trying to impart to her? And why do so many people seem intent on finding that secret out before her – not letting anyone or anything stand in their way?

Hunter Murray has created an all too believable world, one where governments will do anything to hang on to scarce resources, where people are too busy trying to survive to notice the erosion of their freedoms, one where nature reminds us just who is in charge. Into that world he has spun a thrilling tale of politics, espionage and a good old-fashioned on the run drama. Highly enjoyable read you’ll find hard to put down. Recommended.

For his first novel Andrew Hunter Murray uses his imagination to depict a preeminent Britain, all powerful over other nations, able to dictate terms and subjugate the rest of the world to meet its will. Secure behind massive barriers it is able to use areas of North West Europe as a breadbasket. For this dramatic situation to arise it would take for the world to literally stop turning and Britain is very lucky indeed to avoid being plunged into either days of constant frozen nights or burning sun.

In this dystopian world set in 2059 some things are still familiar but much has changed and an Orwellian authoritarian government presides over everything, controlling and propagandising. The story concerns Ellen Hopper, a scientist who leaves the rig where she has been studying ocean currents to be taken in the company of government security agents to the London hospital bedside of her dying old tutor, Edward Thorne who has made a last request to see her.

Soon alongside her ex-husband David, Ellen is plunged into a conspiracy mystery that those in power must prevent at all costs from the secrets emanating from it being revealed. With a wonderfully descriptive narrative of what London in such a world might be like we join Ellen in a race through its streets to avoid capture and to solve the puzzle. An enjoyable read that needs not only to appeal to the dystopian reader. Also this is a warning to what isolationism and climate change disaster might bring.

I found this mystery thriller to be fairly dull and uninvolving and I failed to get my head around the basic premise: the world has stopped spinning and one half is in total darkness and the other light forever. I struggled to finish it and connect with the characters and it just was not the book for me. Considering the number of good dystopian novels on the market I'll be surprised if this finds a market.

I thought I would like this book. A dystopian novel, it has some similarities to The Wall by John Lanchester but is more of a thriller and does not have an engaging narrative voice.

The story is set in the future - sometime this century - in which the Earth has stopped rotating, causing half of the planet to be eternally cold and dark, while the other half is hot and bright. This has disastrous effects. In Britain, there is also an Orwellian government and an intolerance of foreigners. The main character, Ellen Hopper, is a scientist who has been studying ocean currents, but a dying request from her old tutor, Edward Thorne, brings her back to London. She then gets drawn into solving some kind of mystery with the help of her ex-husband David.

I liked the concept, but in between the descriptions of desperate and oppressed humanity, there seemed to be little real plot, other than Hopper going to various buildings and being chased by the police, plus flashbacks to conversations with her college tutor. The idea of the Earth's rotation ceasing is an intriguing one but the cause being a random astronomical event, rather than something terrible that humans have done, seemed like a missed opportunity to me. There was too much description of previous events, making some of the text a chore to read. Everyone seemed to exclaim 'Jesus' and 'Christ' every few pages, which was a bit annoying. Unfortunately I had to skim read the second half of the book because I really wasn't engaged at all. There needed to be more twists and an unexpected ending.

NB. This review will be published on my blog on January 27th 2020.

A great adventure story and political dystopia, with the world building and pace of the race for the truth very well balanced. It's such an intriguing concept—forty years in the future, the Earth no longer turns and the UK just happens to be among the few inhabitable areas left—and if anything, the execution is even more brilliantly done, with echoes of both climate change and Brexit. I really liked the abrupt ending too.

I really liked the concept of this book (the world stops spinning, leaving half the world in darkness and half in light), but it failed to suck me in at all.
The central character seems interesting, and there are some nice mystery elements, but after 50 pages or so I still wasn’t gripped so gave up.

The Last Day is a heady mix of post apocalyptic drama and political thriller, with some intricate world building and intriguing, engaging characters.

It is an end of the world espionage tale as our main protagonist Ellen Hopper risks everything to find out a dangerous secret- dangerous to those in power who are determined to ensure it’s burial. Beautifully plotted, cleverly addictive, you eagerly follow in Ellen’s footsteps through a ravaged and isolated UK, Andrew Hunter Murray adding insightful thought provoking layers as you go.

The ending is thrilling and satisfying, setting up for a sequel yet answering the main question, I read this in two involved sittings and thought it was fantastic.

Recommended.

Fantastic and beautifully written. A brilliant and original story. I would recommend this to everyone