Last Exit by Max Gladstone: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

Last Exit by Max Gladstone

Max Gladstone’s latest, Last Exit, is a blend of (pre)apocalyptic sci-fi, magical realism with a horror twist, and a road movie. It shouldn’t really work, but it comes together well enough.

The plot is straight-forward. A group of people who have met in college and banded together to find alternative worlds, gather one more time to find the one they left behind. But the semi-intelligent rot that bleeds into the worlds, destroying them, doesn’t want her to be found. It’s a constant battle all the way to the crossroads at the heart of the alts, which is the only place where they can find her. Sal is the veritable MacGuffin, always a little out of reach, and never as important for the plot as the characters make her to be.

The idea of alternative worlds isn’t unique, but the rot destroying them makes it more interesting, as does the idea that they can be accessed either with magic or mathematic irregularities, depending on which member of the group you believe. The alts were surprisingly boring though, and while the book gives an explanation to why they’re all so similar, I whish more would’ve been done with them.

But the weakness of the book is its characters. I couldn’t connect with any of them. I followed them down the road, but I was never with them on the journey. I never felt their emotions, fears or pain, because the character experiencing them was never the point of view one. They told very little of themselves and at the end of the book I had learned nothing new.

A road movie is never about the road, it’s about the people on a transformative journey. All the elements were there: four people who used to know everything about each other, good and bad, have grown apart and into different persons in ten years they haven’t seen each other. An epic journey is a chance for them to put the past into a rest so that they can continue with the lives they’ve built for themselves.

The characters plunge into endless reminiscing of the time they met and how the band came to be. Surprisingly little time is spent on remembering their time exploring the alts. The crucial event that led Sal to be lost is brushed away with a quick description that includes torture and fighting people to death. I would’ve thought a trauma like that would merit a larger role in their healing process, but instead they talk about the racism of the college they went to—arguably important, but meaningless for the plot, even with its diverse cast—and the state of (present day) America that they live in.

The token outsider that’s supposed to push the characters out of their remembered patterns only managed to enforce them. The climax was clearly meant to happen because of her, but in the end she was pushed aside and played no crucial role.

All in all, the plot could basically have been the same without Jane and the fantasy elements for how little they meant for the characters. They went through their journey and the world was different at the other end—or at least it felt renewed for them, which is the best anyone can hope. If I’d felt them transform with the world, the book would probably have made a greater impact. Now it’s just something I’ve read. I dithered between three and four stars, but the long stretches that left me bored made me give it three stars in the end.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.