A very insightful, in-depth review by Matt Denault of The Last Book has just appeared at Strange Horizons:
Seeming, we are reminded in Zoran Zivkovic’s The Last Book, is not being: seeming is a story we impose based on surfaces. Zivkovic’s new metafictional mystery seems, for much of its length, designed to convey an appreciation for serious literature over and above any attempt to itself be serious literature. Allusions to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and exhortations to judge books by their content, not their genre, abound; meanwhile Zivkovic’s own story marches in lock-step with the most clichéd of mystery and thriller tropes. Yet by the novel’s end it has become clear that the convivial evocations of Eco’s work and of genre mystery signifiers must be read more as instructions to the reader than a description of content. This is a novel that requires detective work, and ultimately its strength lies in its very un-genre acknowledgement that there is a world beyond its covers.