Censorship
This novel was published during one of the most disturbing periods in American society since the 1950’s. A concerted effort was underway across the country—though success was mainly confined to communities in which the Republican Party dominated the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of state government—to ban not just books about topics which made them uncomfortable from school libraries, but to ban topics which would be allowed to be taught in the classroom about historical facts which made them uncomfortable. One theme which is extensively explored in this story is whoever controls what people are allowed to learn controls their entire identity. The antagonists of the novel known as the Collective exert the power to literally eradicate memories. Since self-identity is inextricably tied to one’s personal memories, this full of the power to control what information people are allowed to know is revealed to be more insidious than simply altering the texts of history.
Cultural Diversity
The protagonist of the novel is a young Latina which is in itself revolutionary for a science fiction geared to young readers. In addition to the hero not being a standard white male or even a slightly less standard white female, the narrative itself is infused with a celebration of Mexican culture. Many of the individual episodes taking place throughout the novel draw inspiration from the myths and folklore of Mexican history. This cultural celebration is, of course, foreshadowed in the title of the book itself. Translated into English, the title becomes The Last Storyteller and refers specifically to the storytelling of its Latina heroine.
Future
When Sir Thomas More published a book in 1516 about a place so impossibly perfect as to be incapable of actually existing anywhere he instantly coined the term utopia with the title of his tome. It would take almost another four-hundred years for John Stuart Mill to come up with a word that described the opposite of a utopia. It would not be until the second half of the 20th century that the word dystopia fell into common usage and not until almost dawn of the 21st century that dystopian fiction supplanted utopia fiction as the definitive vision of the future. In fact, after just a couple of decades into the new millennium it became almost impossible to find a science fiction book portraying the future as a utopia. And yet, despite the bleakness of its setting, the novel avoids complete nihilism with the creation of an optimistic protagonist who never gives up hope.
