This is a timely book which focuses in on one species - orca - to take stock of what we are doing to the planet and our native wildlife.
I'm from the west of Scotland and I had no idea there were ever orcas there.
This book by a marine biologist looks at the existing population and asks questions such as why no calves are being born.

'Last Sunset in the West' is a plea to protect our wild pods of orca around the world, highlighting so many of the ways we endanger them. Sanders focuses primarily on the West Coast Community pod, as the UKs local resident orcas, using their experiences and difficulties as springboards to discuss killer whales around the world.

The book is split into two parts. Part 1 introduces each member of the West Coast community and what little is known of them; part 2 details Sanders' journey on the Silurian, to study their environment. This creates something of a disjointed telling in an otherwise very passionate book. If the two parts were interwoven, rather than separated so completely, I think it would feel more like a single book and not a series of essays bound together,

Nonetheless, if you are interested in orca, or would like to understand some of the wider issues facing marine life around the globe, I would encourage you to give this book a try.

I adore nature writing like this - informative and personal in perfect balance. I had no idea that there were (potentially) two resident orca pods around the UK nor just how diverse and divergent the populations around the world are.
I would love to see Orca in the wild and having read this book I hope that they survive as a species long enough for this to potentially happen.
A book that can make you laugh, cry and learn so much has to be a winner

This is an odd book, and one that I would've given two stars if not for the monumentally important subject matter.

If you want a book that'll teach you more about orcas, this one provides a reasonable introduction - although I recommend Carl Safina's 'Beyond Words' if you want to truly dive into the cognitive and emotional worlds of orcas. The first half of 'The Last Sunset in the West' summarises everything that is known about the UK's last resident West Coast orcas, and gives a potted history of human relations with orcas worldwide plus the basics of orca ecology. You can tell that Sanders has really done her research.

The second half is a diary based account of the author's experiences on a trip surveying marine wildlife around the Inner and Outer Hebrides. There are no orcas in this part, except when mentioned in relation to something else the author saw.

The fundamental weakness of the book is that we know so little, and there have been so few sightings, of the West Coast orcas - but I think the right structure and content could have made up for this. Firstly, splitting the book into an informative part and a diary part didn't work for me at all. I would have far rather had one intersperse the other, especially as I found little to interest me in the diary part. Secondly, Sanders could've taken a leaf out of the book of many other science and nature writers by featuring "on-location" interviews with various experts with something important and relevant to say about the orcas. This would have added much-needed depth and substance.

I also found the writing itself quite basic. I don't expect nature and science writers to write like they're aiming for the Booker (how tiresome that would be!) but I enjoy a modicum of lyricalness to the language, something I didn't find in this book.

So, in short - this isn't a compelling read, but it is an important one.

(With thanks to Sandstone Press and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)