The Man Who Spoke Snakish

The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a dying earth story.

It's the story of a world on the brisk of collapse, following the few who still inhabit it. Their world is being abandoned, replaced, usurped. It's the story of the last pagan Estonians, living as hunter-gatherers in the woods, as their populace is converted to Catholicism and adapts to the sedentary village life.

This is the story of the turning point of an era, both the end of the old and the beginning of the new, but mostly it focuses on the terrible sadness of knowing something is ending forever and you are the last to have witnessed it. There's a moment in this book where our protagonist, Leemet, meets an ancient whale-like creature who pops up for the last time in its life and tells them how lucky they are to be the last to meet this majestic creature. It sums up his experiences throughout the book quite well.

Leemet is often the last something, and this fact turns sourer throughout the book. There's no great pleasure in witnessing the end of what you know, the great inevitability of it all. Leemet fights, rages, loves, tries to escape it, but there's no escaping it.

Leemet dies, and the world dies with him.