Review: The Last Emperox

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite the trilogy! Scalzi took all that he had been building up over the three books and used them to create a satisfying ending. If this isn’t your first Scalzi series you won’t be surprised by the ending. Don’t get me wrong, it had all kinds of twists and turns that surprised and delighted me. But I mean Scalzi is the kind of author where the protagonists aren’t all full of plot armor. Brandon Sanderson is often (although not always) like this too. I prefer the higher stakes compared to, say, X-Men where any death is temporary annoyance.

If you enjoyed Scalzi’s characters from earlier in the trilogy, then you’ll have a blast here. Kiva continued to be my absolute favorite character in just about all of science fiction. Cardenia/Greyland came into her own and Scalzi demonstrates that she was never clueless, just thrust into an epic situation (once again my comparisons to Dune or Game of Thrones) and once she found her footing, she was a great character in her chapters. If you found Kiva or the others annoying, nothing will be better for you in this book. There aren’t really any memorable characters introduced.

Finally, the final line in the epilogue is going to become one of my new favorite endings to a book.

As I believe I mentioned before (don’t feel like checking right now), I’m a voting member of Worldcon this year so I read this series now (rather than when I had it scheduled in my Read Queue) as one of the series nominees. Right now I see the Murderbot Diaries series just barely edging this one out for my top spot. This was a great series as a whole, but Murderbot was awesome in each and every book. We’ll see how the vote eventually goes.

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