Review: The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

I listened to audio-book of the final instalment of John Scalzi’s Interdependency series. I found it to be the most entertaining of the three, partly because I’d warmed more to the key characters but also I think I really wasn’t sure what sort of series this was going to be. Serious space-opera? Snarky parody? Neither of those entirely but for a series involving murder and social collapse, it is strong on humour and genre-savvy sarcasm.

Emperox Greyland II has survived assassination attempts, coup attempts and the hostility of the noble families of the Interdependency. However, the awful reality of the slow collapse of interstellar travel is becoming clear. With most humans living in space habitats or in subterranean complexes on otherwise uninhabitable planets, all eyes are on the one terrestrial planet in the system known as End. There a civil war is in progress but the grim reality is that there are far more people in the Interdependency than can be evacuated to End. Meanwhile, the noble house monopolies (created to not just enrich the aristocracy but also to make civil wars very bad for business) guarantee that an economic collapse will happen long before every human system is cut off from each other. It’s a clever set-up and Scalzi has used the previous books to gradually introduce the multiple elements of the politics and economics of this mercantile empire.

What surprises me is that this was the final book rather than the big cliffhanger episode of a four book series. It would be churlish to complain, in fact it is creditable that rather than spin this out further, the author focused on the key plot elements and brought the whole thing to a clever and satisfying resolution. There is obviously plenty of room for a sequel but even given that the story as presented had plenty of room for expansion. Given the opening of the book, I expected to read more about the civil war on End and the main plot teases a potential epic space battle. Of course, add that in and you’d either have got a much longer final book or a four-part book series. As is, there is a very clear point where this book could have just stopped and left everybody on the seat of their pants waiting for the final book. Instead, we get to the endgame very quickly.

The timeliness of the plot still functions. Although the Emperox herself is competent, the theme of powerful people being too busy looking out for their own interests and petty squabbles to deal with broader existential threats is one that works well with our current condition. I’m not suggesting there is a deep analysis here or that the whole thing is a satire on waning American power — if anything the eventual resolution rests on the dangerous desire in chaotic times to just have somebody really, really powerful take control of everything (fine in a space opera but let’s not ever actually try that).

Entertaining and nicely pitched balance of serious space opera and humour, my only (and highly limited) complaint was that this series was over at that point were I’d shifted from “this sort of good” to “I’m really enjoying this and would like more”. I’m tempted to re-read the series again, as I suspect the first two books will have magically improved now that I’ve got myself in sync with the arc of the story.