The Last Cuentista is a novel written by an American author, Donna Barba Higuera, and published in 2021. It is a science fiction, space travel dystopian novel that falls into the middle-grade age range. It is a second novel by the author, who rose to fame with her children’s novel Lupe Wong.
The Last Cuentista follows the perspective of Petra Peña, a twelve-year-old girl who is getting ready to leave Earth and her beloved storyteller grandmother behind together with her parents and a younger brother Javier on a spaceship meant to send the selected few of humankind to a similar planet called Sagan. Earth is about to be destroyed by an approaching meteor, which her grandmother calls “a young fire snake nagual” returning to his mother Earth in one of her stories to Petra. As the ship takes off, there is an uprising at the hands of the group called the Collective, who want to eradicate all of human history and start anew on Sagan.
The novel is not only a novel about space travel and exploration but an ode to family, humanity, and the main protagonist’s Mexican heritage. It is filled with Mexican stories and myths which Petra uses, not only to remain strong herself when hope seems scarce but to give strength to others as well.
