Published: April 14, 2020
Publisher: Tor Books
Series: The Interdependency #3
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 320 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 3.5/5.0
Synopsis:
The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems—and billions of people—are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization. This collapse was foretold through scientific prediction… and yet, even as the evidence is obvious and insurmountable, many still try to rationalize, delay and profit from, these final days of one of the greatest empires humanity has ever known.
Emperox Grayland II has finally wrested control of her empire from those who oppose her and who deny the reality of this collapse. But “control” is a slippery thing, and even as Grayland strives to save as many of her people from impoverished isolation, the forces opposing her rule will make a final, desperate push to topple her from her throne and power, by any means necessary. Grayland and her thinning list of allies must use every tool at their disposal to save themselves, and all of humanity. And yet it may not be enough.
Will Grayland become the savior of her civilization… or the last emperox to wear the crown?
This is a trilogy that I’ve absolutely loved. The characters are hilariously irreverent and John Scalzi has written these books so that they’re both humorous and serious at the same time. So serious. Because the world as we know it is collapsing one Flow stream at a time. Humanity is about to be cut off from one another and the time is growing shorter by the day.
Anyway, I digress. The Last Emperox is the final installment in this trilogy and it certainly wraps things up in an interesting way. It was mostly satisfying but I almost wanted more? Like, I’m not quite sure how to put it. It wrapped things up and gave me a sense of closure but it was also rather open ended. That’s so contradictory! I give up!
I have loved the characters from the very first book and continued to love them here. Scalzi just likes to give em a figurative kick in the spleen periodically to keep readers on their toes. What will he do to your favorite character next? Maybe nothing?
Honestly, I’m just blathering at this point.
The book was really entertaining and was a pretty good conclusion. To some degree I felt it rushed, but I also expect things like that from John Scalzi because it DOES keep you on your toes and everyone is fair game. he definitely takes moments that could be huge and emotional and pares them down to a brief paragraph. I can see myself re-reading this series when the going gets slow and I need something blatantly irreverent to get me through the week!
Powder & Page 
I had the same feeling that the conclusion remained somewhat open-ended: and since I would love to explore more of this universe – maybe a few centuries down the line? – I hope that Scalzi will return to it in the future.
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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Ahhh that would be so cool!!
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Glad you loved the series overall! This is one I keep meaning to start, I really need to read more Scalzi. 🙂
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It’s a very fun read that isn’t too serious!
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Just finished this book (and with it, this series) and while Scalzi is always relentlessly readable, I was kind of disappointed at the end. Like, we’re told all along the Empire is going to collapse, no bones about it, so the reason you read is to see if our hero can save any *people* before this happens. And nevermind what happens with our hero, when the book closes not a single person that we know of has been saved (although a few have been imprisoned). We’re told they probably *WILL BE* saved. I kind of wanted to be shown as it again more or less was promised.
At least our hero survived . . . oh wait.
Speaking of that kind of snarkiness, it also seemed to me that Scalzi more and more is writing his novels in the pithy and sarcastic and lecturous mode of his world-famed blog, and like I say it’s always readable, but I think I might like to see Scalzi elevate his tone, I guess I might say, the next time around
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It was disappointing that the ending was so open ended! Especially after so much build up about the END!!! I’ve actually never read his blog, but the tone is quite different than that in Old Man’s War.
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