What if the Earth stopped spinning?

⭑⭑⭑⭑ 

I thought the idea behind The Last Day was creative genius. What would happen if the Earth stopped rotating leaving part of the planet exposed to the sun, and lit, 24/7 whilst the rest of the planet is in darkness and frozen? Here, the Slow (diminished rotation) and the Stop (the end of planetary rotation) have occurred and Britain is now the epicenter of constant sunlight. Essentially, the only country still run like a country, without civil unrest, though it's mostly a dictatorship. Ellen Hopper is a scientist on a rig in the Atlantic who is recalled to London to visit an ailing professor she fell out with 15 years ago. Said Prof, Edward Thorne, who was at the center of government for a number of years before being pushed out to take up teaching at Oxford, has something he must pass on to Ellen. What could it be? Here begins Ellen's perilous adventure in London trying to get to the heart of the truth.

The world building in The Last Day is very good. You can easily believe in a world so diminished with no gps or mobile phones, government sanctioned curfew, the one or two remaining newspapers are mere tools of propaganda for the government, where documents are required to travel short distances and travel in a car is a rare thing. But that's not all, the level of tension is heightened as criminals are sent off as slaves, without a trial, to work their fingers to the bone in the breadbasket and the Americans have been granted a sliver of land in the south as their one chance of survival. Crazy new world.

The story is well told and Ellen is a stalwart striving to solve the puzzle. Very driven, she has no qualms about putting herself in jeopardy regardless of the risk. This is rich escapist reading that will put the reader in an entirely different existence. Interesting enough I feel sure there is a sequel to come. We shall see.