From heartwarming, to sad, to straight up quirky, Any Last Words? shares insight from the world’s most interesting figures through the lens of their final words and last moments.

The contemplation of death and its finality leaves many of us shaken and afraid of that inevitable end. As a natural extension of that concept, our last words seem more significant than anything else we’ve said in life, a sort of final impression if you will. With that in mind, I expected Any Last Words?: Deathbed Quotes and Famous Farewells to be a significantly darker work than it is– truthfully, I’m not sure I’m the best suited to critically assess this kind of title as my leisure reading is dedicated almost entirely to horror and genre fiction, but bear with me.

Joseph Hayden’s Any Last Words? is an interesting little book– on the one hand, it covers a topic which most would consider somber at best and potentially terrifying at worst. On the other hand, Hayden’s informational approach and accessible framing go a long way towards normalizing the concept of last words and, by extension, death itself. The book manages to never feel too dreary, and in fact, the tone of the writing is usually playful and upbeat.

This matches well with the rapid-fire one-page-or-shorter style of description and really makes the book fly by. While I’m sure it isn’t Hayden’s intention for Any last Words? to be read in one sitting, the pace is fast enough to accommodate that style of reading. I finished the book in just under two hours of time spent reading across two days. This breakneck speed is a fitting choice, as it allows Hayden to cover a lot of information and provide a relatively large sample size of famous last words. Ultimately, the writing style lends itself to the book’s overall point, which is that not everyone’s last words are going to be well thought out zingers and that, given that we can’t know when we’re going for sure, last words can be an arbitrary thing which are often morphed by history. The mundanity of most people’s final thoughts makes the whole idea of death a lot less foreboding.

There is one change I would make to Any Last Words? if given the opportunity. While it is a fun and short diversion from the main text, I feel that the chapter on last words in film feels out of place, primarily because those included were written to be memorable or to stand out and thus don’t add much to the message of the rest of the book. It would be more interesting, I think, to see a follow-up volume from Hayden which is entirely dedicated to famous last words in media and pop culture. Perhaps it could be broken down into chapters based on medium: in film, literature, television, and other forms of storytelling. It would also make an interesting foil to the bulk of Any Last Words? which is otherwise entirely focused on real-world figures, and would allow for a deeper examination of the way we romanticize the concept.

Any Last Words? won’t be an automatic read for the majority of genre fans, but for those with an interest in history and real-world macabre it’s a fun little collection of knowledge which never takes itself too seriously.

Any Last Words?: Deathbed Quotes and Famous Farewells will release July fifteenth digitally and in paperback.