Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man (2003) Brian K. Vaughan

I just couldn’t get into this. The story looked interesting, but it just didn’t do anything for me.

Some plague–a strange illness, a curse from the Gods, no one knows–has killed every mammal on the planet with a Y chromosome except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand.

One of the premises of the story is that women turn out to be no better at running the planet than men were. There is still plenty of violence and unpleasantness, it’s just woman against woman now.

That may be part of the problem I have with the story. It came across as a refutation of the argument that if women ruled the world it would be a wonderful happy place full of sweetness and light. Maybe that wasn’t the point, but I know full well that women and girls can be just as vicious as men–if not more. So that portion of the story I just found unpleasant.

Yorick Brown is interesting, but I had a hard time caring about him and what was going to happen to him.

For me, the most interesting portion of the story was the succession of power in the US government, and that was only a brief sideline.

So it’s an interesting concept, but it just didn’t hold my attention.
Rating: 5/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Fables Vol 5: The Mean Seasons » »
• « « Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell