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babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Last Emperox 8/10

Well what a closer. I think what I like aside from the near-constant chortling I do through all the Scalzi books I've read is that I rarely manage to figure out how it's going to end. The twist is always wholly unexpected, but at the same time not out of the bounds of plausibility. Now, I'm not 100% sure about that with regards to how the villains just kept coming back like a pack of zombies, but you can't not have a villain, so there's that. I have to say that the twist I did NOT see coming at all and it was incredibly abrupt, to say the least. Honestly, it left me nonplussed for the next 3 or so of the remaining 5 chapters which I kept going through because I knew it wasn't going to end that way. The end was a compromise of sorts, but left me sad nontheless. The chaos I predicted completely didn't come through in the least with the AI in the previous book, so that was a little surprising. For once nowhere was there an evil robot. So I guess that's nice? Overall a good series nonetheless and do recommend.<br/><br/>Quick summary spoilers for me, do not click if you don't want to know exactly what happened. <spoiler><br/><br/>The Nohamapetans and the Wus just kept coming killing others, fake killing themselves, and killing Wus and even trying to fake Kiva's death. Which I thought incredibly stupid considering how resourceful she's always been. I mean, why fake her death and not actually off her? That was just incredibly stupid and it bit them in the ass of course.<br/><br/>I'm still very very surprised that the AI of King Tomas Reynauld Chenevert of Ponthieu was completely benign and decided to have a nice tea chat with Emperox Rachela rather than pull apart her programming and take it over especially after it did so to her smaller programs she kept sending trying to break into his system. A narcissist former king learns while in almost complete solitude over centuries to be a good "person" rather than slowly go completely HAL?? Talk about optimism.<br/><br/>And finally. Offing Grayland II. Sure, it plays as the sacrificial lamb, but sheesh. So sad for Marce. Which is why Kiva as a compromise emperox between Grayland and Nadashe is believable because she sure as fuck would've never off'd herself. She wouldn't have done the pussyfooting either had been doing for years. She would've gone hard and fast and nuked everyone to the ground and then gotten everyone else out to End or wherever. That emperox name, though. Funny in-joke, but holy yikes ugly. Melva, ha.</spoiler><br/><br/>I like to think Scalzi left himself a cracked door to continuing either from whatever comes out of the science research at the end of this book, or even a prequel from before the Rupture from Earth. I don't know if he will return to this universe, but it would be an interesting story.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 17:59 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere