The Last Emperox was published by Tor Books in April 2020 — its release coinciding, with terrible aptness, with the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, making its themes of institutional failure in the face of existential crisis feel uncomfortably prescient. The Flow collapse has accelerated: most routes will close within months rather than decades, and Cardenia must act decisively to save as many people as possible.
The novel brings the trilogy’s political allegory to its conclusion: those who denied the crisis now scramble to profit from it, those who could have prepared didn’t, and the Emperox must choose between democratic legitimacy and effective action. Cardenia’s solution is characteristically Scalzian — pragmatic, morally complicated, and executed with cheerful ruthlessness.
As the series conclusion, the novel resolves its major plot threads satisfyingly while maintaining its satirical edge. Scalzi never lets the reader forget that the Interdependency failed not because the crisis was unforeseeable but because the structures of power made it profitable to ignore. The last Emperox may save some fragment of humanity, but she cannot save the civilization that created her — because that civilization was designed to make saving itself impossible.
Collecting The Last Emperox
First edition (Tor Books, New York, 2020): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$35
- Signed copies: $30–$60