★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Last Emperox
• Series: Interdependency #3
• Author: John Scalzi
• Year: 2020
• Pages: 313*
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Publisher: Tor
• ISBN 978-0-7653-8916-9 (hardcover)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* Actually it’s 305, considering the first page is numbered “9”.)

 

Summary

Opening at number six on The New York Times bestseller list (for combined print and ebook fiction), The Last Emperox is the third (and last?) book in the “Interdependency” series. (The first two are The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire.) This book wraps up the threads left unfinished in the first two books, the stories of Emperox Grayland II, Kiva Lagos, Marce Claremont, and Nadashe Nohamapetan, among others.

This review will be without spoilers.

 

Praise

This was a fitting end to the trilogy. There were surprises — the series has been full of them — and “yes!” moments on the part of the reader. A handful of twists and turns, with varying degrees of predictability, increased enjoyment.

(Some may count this as a negative, but...) There is more exposition in this novel than I remember from the first two — in place of dialog and action. Especially in the first half of the book, I noticed more than usual for Scalzi. I count it as a plus because I think some things just need to be told to me by the author rather than overheard via character dialog. Also, Scalzi does exposition very well in this book — concise and fun.

 

Points Off For...

I occasionally read the author’s blog, and I follow him on Twitter, so I knew beforehand that he procrastinated more than usual on this manuscript, turning it in at the very last minute. Some of that, I think, showed up in the book.

For one, there were several typos, like when one character “chucked” (I assume he was supposed to have chuckled). Two, parts of the narrative seemed rushed, the kind of thing a really talented sci-fi author might churn out in a marathon typing session — which is still fun to read and still makes sense in the context of the story — because the author had presumably planned out at least the outline of this a few years ago. Just not quite as... polished, I guess.

Scalzi’s characteristic lack of character descriptions wasn’t quite the annoyance to me here as it usually is, mainly because I am already familiar with (almost) all of these characters from the previous books.

 

Extra

This is probably the earliest I’ve ever read and reviewed a book, in relation to its initial release date. My review goes up just ten days after the book became available.

Scalzi has said on Twitter and elsewhere that “emperox” is pronounced with an “oh” at the end (not “ox”), and apparently this is true in the audiobook versions. But he has also said the “ox” ending is acceptable, which is a relief because that’s what I’ve been hearing in my head all this time.

 

Conclusion

This makes twice in one year that I’ve finished a Scalzi series (last month I read The End Of All Things), and I think this was the better of the two endings, or at least more enjoyable to read. I don’t think either would have been enjoyable as standalone books; both worked really well as series-enders.

 

 

---

---

comments powered by Disqus