Title: The Last Sanctuary (novel)
Author: Kyla Stone
Genre: Post Apocalyptic
Release Date: 31st October 2025
BLURB
Run to save your life—or stay and fight for what's yours.
Isolated at her family's wildlife refuge in northern Georgia, Raven longs to escape. Instead, she spends her days shoveling manure for bears, wolves, and a tiger. That is, until her father contracts the Hydra virus—a mysterious, lethal disease spreading across the country like wildfire.
Desperate to help him, Raven journeys into town to get medicine, only to discover the outside world is swiftly collapsing into chaos. There are no more police, no more laws, and no hospitals. No one is coming to help.
The wildlife refuge she once resented now offers sanctuary: plenty of food, shelter, and the safety of electrified fences. Using the skills her father taught her, Raven knows how to survive.
But the threat is just beginning, for a dangerous gang tracks Raven back to the refuge, and they'll stop at nothing to take what she has.
Raven can run. Or she can stand her ground, risking everything to defend the animals—and her home.
*This novel is the expanded, significantly revised version of a novella originally titled No Safe Haven.*
REVIEW
First of all, I have to say I love the book cover. It depicts the feel of human loneliness yet being part of a hybrid wolf pack that the main character, Raven feels throughout the book at different stages. The cover also provide imagery to fit the scenes within the book too.
The “normal” world has ended. There’s a hydra virus rampaging through humans and animals alike. Theres no internet or services, no police to come to the rescue when marauding gangs take it upon themselves to steal whatever few supplies and possessions you may have from you.
Raven Nakamura lives at the Haven Wildlife Sanctuary, she has grown up there, first with both her parents and then with just her rather detached, brusque father, after her mother left him. Raven’s mother had asked Raven to go with her but she had stubbornly refused choosing the life she knew and the animals she loved instead. Raven has grown up working hard, helping her father, Kioka Nakamura with all the different animals at the sanctuary. Initially her father is quite blasé about the hydra virus simply thinking his workers not turning up for work have flu and are being lazy, but that changes when the head zookeeper contracts the virus. Kioka’s first reaction is to order the zookeeper to get off the property as he now realises the hydra virus does exist, however Zacharia is more like family, having worked there for years and Raven begs her father to allow him to stay. The deal struck with Zacharia is he must isolate away from them until the disease has run its course. Unfortunately, the disease clouds the Zacharia’s judgement and one day when Raven is feeding the animals he attacks her. His saliva being spat all over her face meaning now she is at a high risk of contracting hydra virus. Raven now face the wait to see if she will succumb to the deadly virus. Its in the following days Raven notices her own father, Kioka is ill with the hydra virus. After much debate and Kioka trying to forbid his daughter from going into town, she ventures into nearby Forsyth for some medication to ease her father’s illness. In the pharmacy the owner Phil Maxwell speaks highly of her father and willingly hands over some oxycodone pills to Raven saying he owes him a debt from many years ago. Phils son Carl is angry about his father just giving away what he considers vital supplies they could sell or use themselves. Raven is leaving the pharmacy when some bikers enter, so she hides behind some shelving and watches in horror as the biker’s demand everything the pharmacy has left. Phil attempts to reason with the bikers but they have guns and when Carl puts up a fight one of them shoots him!
Later as Raven returns to the Toyota Camry truck she has, she has an altercation with the bikers. Raven’s last words before she left had warned her to take the tranquiliser gun with her and this is what she uses to ward off the bikers as she leaves Forsyth at high speed.
Raven gives her father some of the pills which ease his pain, but nothing can cure the hydra virus and eventually Raven has to do the unthinkable and bury her own father. Raven may not have had a lot of demonstrative love from her father but he has given her survival skills and the backbone to make difficult decisions. Both skills Raven will come to rely on in the coming days. Even during her grief Raven doesn’t forget the animals, feeding them all in turn. Giving the extra jerky treats to Vlad the tiger, and the meat carcasses to the hybrid wolves Shadow & Luna along with tending the rest of the animals in the sanctuary.
It’s not long until the bikers arrive at Haven, having seen a leaflet for the Sanctuary listing the amenities there along with the animals, the bikers think they have hit the jackpot for food.
Raven has to think rapidly, be light on her feet and try to stay one step ahead of the bikers. One night she risks sneaking into her bedroom for her backpack packed with survival equipment. The very same backpack she had prepared to sneak off with before her father contracted the hydra virus. Whilst in the process of taking her belonging someone comes into the room, Damien Vaughn. It turns out he doesn’t mean her any harm and reveals to her that she needs to leave and get as far away as possible as she really doesn’t want the other bikers to catch her as they trade women and worse. Raven ends up being chased and mistakenly ends up in the hybrid wolf enclosure rather than the timber wolf enclosure she was going to. Following all the advice and instruction she can ever remember her father giving her, she makes herself small and unthreatening. Surprisingly the hybrid wolves, Luna the beautiful ghost like white alpha female and Shadow the black alpha male that lives up to his name end up accepting Raven into their pack!
Raven is still wondering if she has the hydra virus herself and decides of she may be going to die anyway she will take a few risks. She doesn’t want to leave the animals that she has cared for and loves at the hands of the bikers who wish to kill them to eat and for their pelts. It’s the last straw when she hears the timber wolves being shot at. Under the cover of darkness Raven slowly moves around the sanctuary and opens the animal cages and enclosures, the bonobos, the zebra, the remaining timber wolves, the leopard, bobcat, red foxes etc and the very last she frees Vlad the tiger.
I loved the character of Raven, the selfless, sometimes reckless acts she undertakes. Kioka Nakamura has raised a stubborn young woman with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. Raven has some really difficult decisions to make throughout the book. Raven could have taken her backpack and just left the animals. Raven did ponder if she was doing the right thing as these animals may have been caged for most of their lives but they are still predators. There are many times in the book where Raven definitely looks out for, and protects the sanctuary animals, even returning to Haven to rescue a captured one. There are also many occasions where the animals of sanctuary actually help or save Raven. Though Raven never forgets these are predatory animals she is dealing with, she trusts them more than the humans around her.
I really liked the character of Damien, he was part of the biker gang more by circumstances than choice and does attempt to help Raven more than once. It’s a shame he isn’t brave or confident enough to leave the biker gang behind him.
I also adored all the different animals and learning their characters and quirks. The way Vlad loved his jerky that Raven would take him and would chuff at her in such a way it was as if he was laughing.
The different character of the bonobos, the youngest one being cheeky Gizmo who had his own form of showing Raven his displeasure and then would be playful with her too.
Of course, my favourites of the animals were Shadow and Luna, who slowly accepted Raven into their pack as one of them, ending up with the three of them being that closely bonded none of them would hesitate to fight for the other if needed.
I felt the book was quite fast paced, I read it within a few of reading sessions. I thought the animals of the Haven Sanctuary were described in such a way that you felt you knew them as well as Raven. The world building was interesting and I certainly want to read more set in this world. The detailed descriptions of both the surrounding and events help you easily visualise them. Allowing the book to almost play like a movie in your head as you are reading it.
My first thoughts upon finishing the book were that I loved it and wanted more! This book, The Last Sanctuary is an expanded version of a novella which was called No Safe Haven. It is also set in the same world as The Last Sanctuary series which is firmly on my to read list after learning that Raven and Shadow appear in book two of the series!
Summing up, I’d have to say Raven is one tough young woman, she’d already been through a lot before the hydra virus hit but she certainly puts everything her father has taught her into practice and good use. It really is a case of survival of the fittest. Having said that Raven chooses to survive without hurting others or taking from them, unlike the bikers who see what they want and just take it without a second thought to the consequences. The brilliant irony within the book is that when Raven freed the caged animals because they were slowly being picked off and shot by the bikers, the bike predators became the prey of the animal predators.
