Max Gladstone’s LAST EXIT was a tricky high-concept novel which was tricky to wrap my head around and I struggled to make sense of the first fifty pages, but as things moved on the weirdness became more understandable and nicely fused science fiction and fantasy. Other reviews have mentioned Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, but it reminded me more of The Talisman.

In this novel the high concept revolves around American highways which double up as magical networks which link cities and by default alternate worlds with different realities. The main character Zelda has been doing this for over ten years and has a group of friends she travels with, the story partially revolves around one of her friends (and lover Sal) whom she loses in another dimension. In these other places the travellers have ‘knacks’ which are a bit like superpowers which only work in certain places.

As they move from reality to reality they identify a Rot which is spreading through the worlds which they struggle to stop, or at least Zelda does. LAST EXIT was a fairly chunky book and could have been trimmed of a decent number of pages as it turned into a slog around the middle section and became repetitive. However, the descriptions were great and the exploration of the relationship between Sal and Zelda was nicely handled. It just took too long getting to an ending which was slightly underwhelming. But if you are a fan of long meandering genre-bending books LAST EXIT has a lot to offer.

I really WANTED to like this book. In theory, I really SHOULD have liked it. It’s certainly got the raw ingredients in it for me, BUT, at the end of the day, it just didn’t cut it for me…. Ultimately, it employed most of the usual tropes associated with the genre, but without any ‘real’ originality…. The characters were a little flat, and whilst I felt some sympathy with the main character, all the secondary characters just didn’t really do it for me…. The writing (I felt), was not of a particularly great standard, and even worse, after I reached the conclusion, I thought that the story, such as it was, may not have actually been worth telling. Overall, I found it disappointing.

I read and mostly liked 2 other books by Max Gladstone (Empress of Forever and This Is How You Lose The Time War). Unfortunately, Last Exit reads like a coming of age story written by a freshman, at best. Perhaps I may have enjoyed this book when I was still a teenager. Way too long, with the same themes and adolescent fantasies/angst repeating over and over again. I stopped reading halfway through.

So I'd like to preface this review by saying that I'm a big fan of this author, and have read all his previous works and enjoyed them immensely. When I saw this book and read the summary, it sounded like it would be right up my alley. Well, it was...but there are some issues I had with the book. The story was gloriously weird, almost in the same vein as China Mieville, which I consider a plus. However, this book is most definitely a book about the journey, with the final destination being almost incidental. The characters, while well-written, were basically archetypes with very little depth. The big betrayal at the end was incredibly obvious from miles away. And then let's talk about the writing. Max Gladstone's writing in his other works is clear, concise, and moves you along to where the author wants you. In contrast, the writing in Last Exit is incredibly dense and wordy, with an overabundance of descriptive language and weird tangents. There's a lot to unpack here, and while there are several moments of incredible brilliance I found that more often than not, the density of the writing was actually getting in the way of telling the story. While overall I enjoyed the book, it also left me feeling unsatisfied/unfulfilled. I wanted to know more about the alts and more about the knacks. And also, the relationship between Sal and Zelda, while being instrumental to the story and each character's motivations, seemed weirdly undefined and also kind of toxic. I would give this a 3.5/5 if I could.

I enjoyed it but sometimes felt lost. Maybe that is good? In any case well written. Vivid. Denser than his other books.

As usual, Max Gladstone has written a sweeping epic with beautiful prose, intricate worlds, and interesting characters. It is a largely character driven book, so it spends just as much time on internal monologues as on a plot. The the story moves slowly, but I enjoyed the characters and their strange road trip between worlds.

Gladstone includes a lot of commentary on social issues like racism, sexism, climate change, etc, with our characters fighting the literal embodiment of all of those things. It's an admirable attempt at social awareness, but the ending falls extremely flat when they defeat it by...thinking positively? They defeat the literal embodiment of bigotry by embracing the infinite possibility of...not being a bigot, i guess, and go home to find that everyone is vaguely happier. It felt strange to me. I think the themes were a little too ambitious for a fantasy story where magic saves the day.

The story was well executed in that it built up a lot of tension and excitement for the climax, and like most Gladstone works I enjoyed it enough for 5 stars, but the ending left me so unsatisfied I have to give it 3.

While I gave a 5 star review this is not everyone’s cup of tea. I find the book poetic, jagged, glitching and distorted. To me its a book that is unreal, you get confused between whether the author is speaking about real life or whether the actual plot is meant to be this different world. While not or a long book it takes a long time read and you have to ask yourself all the time: what am I reading. I find you have to constantly make sense of it by breaking through the distortion between real life vs. science fiction. More pointedly how much is the science fiction actually being used as a metaphor to speak about us. I feel Gladstone reveals a certain subtlety about our existence. We all seem normal, but inside our heads its all science fiction. So while we may think these characters are other people, they are us. We create so many illusions to survive and ordinary writing doesn’t quite describe it.

The rot which Gladstone speaks about resonates in much of human thought, how often are thoughts of our own rotten and need to be thrown out. What do these rotten thoughts bring about, what kind of dark realities do we get stuck in, what kind of evil cowboys do they bring about.

I must say this guy (Gladstone) startles my thinking. He jump starts it with lightning writing.