Review: The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

Review: The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

by Rich Horton

This novel, from 2020, is the final entry in John Scalzi's Interdependency series, after The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018). I had enjoyed the first two novels, and always intended to finish the series, and in fact bought the book long ago, but just never got around to it. I finally have, and I'm glad I did.

The setup, in a few sentences. The Interdependency is an interstellar empire comprising a number of star systems, all linked by the Flow, a kind of traditional set of something like wormhole links. They're not really wormholes, but they act kind of like them, and they allow much faster than light travel between systems, though those trips still take, typically, weeks or months. The Interdependency was formed about a millennium before the action of these novels, and it was designed specifically to have the various systems depend on each other -- so each system only makes a few necessary products, and must trade with all the others to survive. Especially since almost all the planets are uninhabitable, and the people either live underground or in space habitats.

However, the Flow is collapsing -- and within a number of years, all the systems will be isolated again. The rather young, rather new, Emperox, Grayland II, is working as hard as she can to save as many of her subjects as possible, by moving them to the one human-habitable planet, End. She has the help of the scientist who knows more about the Flow than anyone, Marce Claremont. (And she and Marce have become lovers.) But Grayland is opposed by many of the other noble houses, who are more interested in saving themselves than the common people, and who also are more interested in their political power games than in actually working on solving the collapsing Flow problem. And the most evil of these -- a real mustache-twirler had she a mustache -- is Nadashe Nohamapetan. The Nohamapetans have already tried to assassinate Grayland a couple of times, and Nadashe is plotting to have another go at it, and to make herself Emperox.

So, the novel becomes a sort of race against time -- can Grayland use her position to set in place a plan to save most of the Interdependency before Nadashe finally manages to kill her? Grayland has the help of her lover Marce, who has some theoretical ideas that may help at least delay the full collapse of the Flow, and might also help move more people to End -- if he only had the time. Grayland also has the help of simulations of all the previous Emperox's, to give her advice, and of the wily and profane Lady Kiva Lagos. And of course Nadashe has her own fellow schemers, though they do have the usual problem of those sorts -- none of them trust the other.

It's really a very enjoyable novel. It's told in Scalzi's typical snarky voice. To be honest, this voice can get wearing at times, especially as many of the characters sound pretty much the same. Still, Scalzi does snark very well. The love story is really pretty sweet. The political manipulations are interesting -- over the top evil, yes, but interesting. The science is all obviously made up, but it's cleverly done, and it's in the service of a well-constructed story with some pretty worthwhile discussion of morals, of how to govern, of the effect of travel on society, and such. The good guy characters are pretty delightful. The bad guys -- well, it's fun to read about their plotting and such, but maybe the mustache-twirling I mentioned is a tad over the top. And there is too clear a divide between the good guys and the bad guys -- the good guys are all nice, the bad guys are all super-evil. The plot logic is kind of inexorable, and after a while I was able to see how it would have to resolve -- which while it does in a sense (literal sense, really) involve a deus ex machina, gets there sensibly, and doesn't cheat on its internal logic. Having said that, the ending does come off a bit rushed. I would say, in fact, that the Interdependency novels are my personal favorites of Scalzi's books.