They met in college. Each of them had come to college thinking they wouldn't fit in, as they hadn't fit in growing up. But they found each other and formed a group that would have lifelong connections. Zelda was a Southern girl from a small rural fundamentalist town. She found Sal, a brash Brooklyn girl and they fell in love. Ramon and Ish were roommates and best friends. Sarah was the most traditional of the group and kept them grounded.

The five found a secret about the universe and hit the road to save the world. They found alternate universes and fought the rot that was threatening ours. But at the end, Sal took a step too far and was lost in an alternate world.

It's ten years later. Zelda has never left the road, crisscrossing the country, hoping to find a way to get Sal back and repairing the rot where she could. She finally realizes that she can't do this journey by herself and calls the others back together along with Sal's sixteen year old cousin June who insists she come along to find her cousin. But the trip is perilous with horrors in other alts and a new enemy, The Man In The Cowboy Hat. He tracks the group and its unclear what he wants but clear that he intends to get it. Will the group be successful this time?

This is a magnificent American road trip. The relationship between the characters is heart sustaining. Zelda is faithful to her first love and determined to do whatever it takes to be reunited with her, no matter the price she will have to pray. The others have moved on in life, with professions like doctor and engineer but know they left something undone in their past. They come together to save Sal but more importantly to save the world. This book is recommended for fantasy readers. It may be Max Gladstone's best work and that's saying a lot.

The premise of this book was so interesting and I was totally not expecting an evil cowboy in this book which was pretty fun! I really loved the action in this book and usually I love flashbacks, but I think there were a bit too many in this book that the book could be a bit shorter. I appreciated that there was lgbtq+ representation in the book, but there were no characters that I was super attached to. However, it was really cool trying to understand this universe and their powers.

The fact that it took me forever to finish this title is by no means a reflection of the story. Gladstone is one of my favorite contemporary authors and I kept getting distracted by his other titles and even his Spotify audio drama. Last Exit reminded me so much of The Left Right Game (also an audio drama that I loved so, so much) that I kept being reluctant to finish Last Exit. Once it was done, I would have nothing else to fill that itch for more stories like it. That being said, I have hand sold multiple copies of this title in the interim to customers who also needed this story without knowing it. Gladstone didn't disappoint and I know I will find myself rereading it, without the hesitation to finish. I will also continue to recommend and hand sell this title at every opportunity.

Max Gladstone's Last Exit is a brilliant and captivating work of science fiction that deftly weaves together elements of mystery, adventure, and intrigue. Set in a futuristic city where technology and magic coexist, the story follows a group of characters as they race against time to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to upend their world. Gladstone's writing is masterful, with a vivid and immersive style that brings the world to life and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. The characters are complex and multi-dimensional, each with their own distinct voice and motivations that add depth and nuance to the plot. The world-building is impeccable, with a richly detailed and fully realized setting that feels both fantastic and believable. Overall, Last Exit is a triumph of science fiction, a must-read for fans of the genre. Gladstone's skill as a writer is on full display here, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

A really remarkable book that completely defies any attempt to put it in a genre. This is a Great American Road Trip Novel for my generation. If you liked American Gods, you’ll like this. Be warned, it’s not a quick read. The prose here is gorgeous, and each sentence demands to be reread to get the full impact.
Full review on YouTube

There were three other, somewhat mismatched, works of SF/F that kept coming to mind as I read this book: *American Gods* by Niel Gaiman, *The Dark Tower* series by Stephen King, and *Kaiju Preservation Society* by John Scalzi. *American Gods* for the setting: contemporary America, with magic and menace in the mundane. *Dark Tower* for the inspiration behind the plot: a ka-tet that sought the Tower, failed, and was broken and scattered, coming together to try again. And *KPS* because it was so obvious that this book was the author’s method of coping with *gestures vaguely at everything*. (as an aside, Gladstone’s and Scalzi’s respective coping strategies are more or less polar opposites, which doesn’t really surprise me)

To expand on the plot: a group of students from Yale figured out a way to travel to alternate realities, all of which are broken and ruined in various ways (Earth Prime is as good as it gets, which is depressing). They had various adventures that are alluded to, and sought to reach the center of everything where they hope to be able to *fix* everything. It doesn’t go well, one of them is lost, and the group all goes their separate ways. The main protagonist, the lover of the one who was lost, obsessively continues the work solo. The others all try to find normal lives and forget what they have seen. The story proper kicks off when the main protagonist asks them all to come together to deal with a looming threat.

This was not the easiest book to read. It was hyper-contemporary for the last few years. Covid-19, Donald Trump, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, ICE: none of these are mentioned explicitly, but they all play a big role in the story (one of the group, after they went their separate ways, went on to found a fictional version of Palantir Technologies with all the questionable ethics involved). The overall feel of the world since (approximately) November 2016 is in fact the driving force behind their actions. The group believes that the supernatural “rot” which pervades all the alternate realities is affecting ours as well, making capitalism worse, police more aggressive, people less caring about their neighbors.

Like I said, not a particularly easy book to read. This is about as far from “escapist” as it is possible to get. I’m honestly not sure how to rank this book on a 5-star scale. I didn’t particularly enjoy reading this, but I don’t actually think it was a bad book. I think it was three things that kept me from really liking this. One was how topical it was, for obvious reasons. Two was the language: it’s very densely written, with long, many-claused sentences and metaphorical descriptions. Three: it felt very pretentious in places. A decent portion of the book is giving to poking holes in the pretensions of Yale and its students and alumni, but even so, this felt like a very pretentious work of capital-L Literature in any number of places.

The idea of true love and the lengths that it will break the bounds of reality takes on a literal form and perspective in "Last Exit" [Max Gladstone/Tor/400pgs]. The Alts are a place in between where different aspects of darker futures run in parallel to our existence. A group of 5 college students 10 or 15 years ago (approx.) traveled to different paths trying to right certain wrongs before they lost one of their own: Sal. The Troup is like The Goonies or It. Everyone has their own quirks but adds their own distinctiveness. These characters are very well defined though Zelda is the one with the most skin in the game because she never transferred to her next step. She lost her love Sal when the crossroads took her. Now many years afterwards, Zelda is trying to find the ways to close up the cracks to the other worlds. However she keeps seeing visions of Sal instead being in a different, likely darker place. Sal's cousin June pushes Zelda looking back towards where she dare not pursue but needs to. The other members including Ish, Ramon and Sarah are the perfect balance of people with strengths but with inherent flaws that make them stronger.

Zelda reaches out in letter form because there is a presence (a faceless cowboy) that can find them through anything electronic. This device in certain ways feels like a form of "The Matrix" with the agents but with a single individual in the cowboy instead forming the front line. In terms of the others who form the group, Ramon firstly has a connection with a car that transcends space and reality and a sense to avoid danger. Each of the group has this kind of defined knack. Sarah, a mother of two, protects her clan at times from an evil which is her knack. June sees that she can draw and open what is called "the rot" towards her. Ish is the wild card and the flashbacks dictate this. There is a little more between them all, including hidden desires, some realized, some not that are related in flashbacks much like again "It" or "Dreamcatcher". The dynamics of the book are interesting and the imagery including everything from a haunted amusement park to riding on dead mechanical horses to a dilapidated Oz of sorts is very vivid though the book itself is not a quick read so instead reads longer that it should. That said "Last Exit", like its reference to Sartre, is about the nature of being either understood or fleeting. B+

By Tim Wassberg

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me and I dnf'd the book at the 20% mark. This is completely my own fault, as this was a stretch outside my comfort zone and a book I wanted to try as I had read and loved Max Gladstone's joint work with Amar El-Mohtar, This is How You Lose the Time War, and wanted to see what his writing was like on its own.

I found what I read very overwrought and very confusing. There was so much description about how the main character was feeling and so much description about the main character... doing something with math or something? or describing what was happening with these various metaphysical possibilities. I just... didn't get it. Despite how much time was spent on these wild descriptions I never really felt like anything was explained. And while I imagine there were some more explanation to come in the book after I stopped reading, it was such a struggle to get through the amount that I did that I just could not think about continuing. I think this is just several steps deeper into hypothetical science fiction than where my comfort zone usually lies with this genre, so I'm very sorry for that.

3.5ish stars.

As always, Gladstone has lovely, poetic writing. That is both a plus and a minus in this case, as it's lovely to read, but doesn't make sense in the dialogue of the characters who speak very poetically to each other and not the way humans naturally do. It's a creative story, but a slow one.

Last Exit is the latest novel to come from the mind of Max Gladstone, a science fiction and fantasy author I've been reading for years. Naturally, that meant I had to scoop it up! Though, if I'm being honest, that cover would have drawn me in regardless.

A decade ago, Zelda and her group of friends learned that they had a unique ability, which they called knacks. These knacks let them travel to alternate realities. There's a catch, of course. There's a rot threatening each reality they visit, and it is up to her crew to battle it wherever they go.

But again, that was a decade ago. When their battle was lost, they all parted ways. Unable to bear the pain and guilt of it all. Except, Zelda doesn't want the group to remain in the past, so she will do what she does best. She hopes.

“Monsters never died, they only slept a while.”

I want to preface this review by saying that I distinctly remember loving Max Gladstone's writing – though it feels like it has been a while since I read anything by him. So naturally, I was quite excited when Last Exit made its way to my desk.

At a glance, Last Exit is a lot to take in. That actually proves true even once you begin to delve deeper, but moving on. The character names all feel weighted, having references that no fan can miss. As for the story, readers are thrown into the deep end. All the characters already know their abilities and are only now coming back around to using them. It's a twist that makes readers feel like they have to work to catch up.

I didn't mind any of that, as it certainly worked to keep me interested and invested. Though in truth, I wouldn't have minded getting to know the characters a little bit better before everything kicked off.

What I loved the most about Last Exit because of how unique it feels. It's a fantasy world-hopper tale, but it has shockingly dark twists. Throw in a wide array of characters (and a solid amount of representation, too), and as I said before, there's a lot to take in a while reading – and that's grand.

This appears to be a very cerebral book. Perhaps a bit more cerebral than I like. I couldn’t get into it. I’m sure that there is an audience that will find this intriguing and dystopian oriented. I just found it confusing. Alternative worlds road trip while coming of age and facing a implacable foe is as close to a description as I can get.

Unfortunately I could not find my way to the end of this book. While certainly well written, the way the magic worked was lacking in any sort of explanation. It was just sort of accepted and explained away with hey you spin around a lot and there's some math involved. I just could not find my way into the story and while others I know who have read it are quite positive in their reviews, this one was just not for me.

Last Exit, by Max Gladstone, is a beautifully written character story that I had an extremely hard time connecting with. Many readers who pick up this standalone adventure will find a mesmerizing story about self-discovery, penance, and the nature of the world. Max Gladstone is a favorite author of mine for his work on The Craft Sequence and Bookburners. However, with Last Exit, I found a book that moved way too slowly for my taste. The endless inner dialogue and excessive introspection bogged down my reading experience until it ground to a halt.

Ten years ago, our protagonist Zelda led a band of college occult adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake worlds. The group was made up of Zelda the warrior; Ish, who could locate people anywhere; Ramon, who always knew what path to take; Sarah, who could turn catastrophe aside; and finally Sal, who was that friend who was just kinda there. When a mission to fight the rot went awry and resulted in the death of Sal, the group broke up, never to speak again. As penance, Zelda now continues the fight against the rot on her own — only taking a yearly break to pilgrimage to Sal’s family and beg for forgiveness for her part in her untimely death. But, the rot is getting worse and the world is falling apart. Can the team come back together for one last mission, overcome their trauma, and save reality before the rot consumes everything?

Let’s start with the good: Last Exit is atmospherically brilliant. As with most of his books, Gladstone is a master of weaving ambiance and setting into a living and breathing organism that suffuses you. The world of Last Exit is creepy beyond belief and the nightmares that populate it haunted my dreams long after finishing the book. The imagery of the book is extremely vivid, which is more impressive than usual thanks to its urban fantasy setting. Gladstone manages to paint our world in an ethereal quality that feels both real and fantasy at the same time.

The characters also have a lot of depth and beauty. Although it hurts the book’s pacing greatly, the story goes into rich mini backstory segments for each of the cast that shows you the forces in their life that made them into who they are now. They are very intense and emotional character trauma sessions that will leave you emotionally moved and drained. This is true of all of the characters except Sal, who I had trouble buying into, and is the first of many issues I had with my read.

Ostensibly, Sal is the heart and glue of the group that held them all together. In reality, it is pretty clear that Zelda actually occupies that role and that Sal was just how everyone met once upon a time and was Zelda’s love interest. I am really not a fan of “dead partners” looming over stories as vague motivations for characters and Sal in particular felt massively underdeveloped when compared to the extreme depth that the rest of the cast got. While the character examinations are impressive, after a while it starts to feel like there isn’t a lot of plot beyond who these people are and their personalities. That isn’t necessarily a problem, I often love purely character-driven books, but this one just seemed to drag and I found Zelda’s motivations difficult to buy into.

One of my biggest problems with the book is the underlying implications of one of its key themes. A big portion of the story is devoted to hunting down and carving out the rot of the world. It is implied that all of the troubles of the world (from hunger to police brutality to people just being dicks) stem from this rot. We eventually discover the rot source and (to me) the implications of the source do not paint a good picture when extrapolated to “why bad things happen to good people” in our world. The metaphysics of what the rot actually is gets very complicated at the end, and it’s possible I just read it incorrectly. In addition, if I am correct in my analysis, I think it is an accidental implication, not what Gladstone was actually going for. However, I can’t actually delve into further detail without spoiling the ending so I will just have to wait and talk to other people who finished the book.

Overall, Last Exit is a trademark Gladstone novel with his signature rich worldbuilding and evocative characters. However, the slow pacing and messing character motivations of the protagonist left me with a book that I struggled to get through due to a poor connection with the cast and themes. I am sure that many people who want a diverse character-driven story will love this, but it was not for me.

Rating: Last Exit – 6.5/10
-Andrew

This hooked me early on, a heavy read with dense language and a patient narrative, but as it wore on I found the reading didn't get any easier, the characters didn't get any more likable, and the story didn't move anywhere I was interested in. A very cool concept with some fabulous scenes of the wonderous and bizarre, but completely overwhelmed by scenes of wallowing and self-pity that became so deep, the eventual reveal of the 'loss' behind it call can't help but fall flat.

Stunning. Spectacular. A real treat from beginning to end. Reads like a old Stephen King novel, gritty and dark and a little untamed, a rich history that is referenced just enough to make you salivate for more. I read it slowly in the way that I savor the best books, because I didn't want it to end (not because it was lacking at any point, but because it could never be enough). The best book I've read so far this year. Read this book.

Stars: 2.5 out of 5

It pains me to give a less than stellar rating to Max Gladstone, but this is the first book of his I've been disappointed with. How can a book about found family, road trip, end of the world, parallel universes and so on be so... boring?

I loved this author's Craft series. They are wonderfully imaginative and full of interesting characters and thought provoking concepts. So of course I jumped on the chance to get an ARC of this through NetGalley. And my initial state while I was reading this book, before the boredom set in, was that of bewilderment. Is this the author who wowed me with his other books? Am I reading this wrong? What is going on?

Oh, there are glimpses of the author I love in this story. There are moments that are tightly written and intensely terrifying. Like when the Cowboy first becomes aware of Sarah on the interstate, or the confrontation at the Best Western, or when Zelda is in the bug-infested tunnels under an alt New York. Those scenes had me at the edge of my seat, with my heart in my throat, terrified for the well-being of the characters...

Unfortunately, those moments of brilliance are few and far between. And they are bogged down by pages and pages of flashbacks, introspections, inner dialog about how miserable the characters are and how they think that the world is ending. It's self-pity and self-recrimination on page upon page upon page. So you get this brilliant scene when the action is non-stop, the stakes are high, and the characters in danger... then you have 50 pages of inner monolog topped with a flashback on their first journey. Momentum - shot dead, not by the cowboy in a white hat, but by sheer boredom. In fact, I think that the book is at least 200 pages too long. My Kindle assured me that it was 400 pages long, but it felt like one of those 1000+ pages door stoppers - never-ending.

I think this approach would have worked if I cared for any of the characters, but I didn't. They are all unlikeable, selfish people who wear their failures like a badge of honor and wallow in self-pity for most of the book. And since the reader has to follow them and be privy to their most inner thoughts, it makes for a very painful read, and not in a good way. 

Also, it is constantly hinted that their first journey to find the crossroads went horribly wrong and resulted in Sal's downfall, but the book drags the actual story over pages and pages of hints and self-pity. By the time we actually learn what happened it feels... anti-climatic? I was like, "So all this misery is because of this? Are you kidding me?" Not a good thing when Sal's downfall and Zelda's guilt about it are the cornerstone of this story. 

By the end of the book I was so bored with the story, that I just skimmed through the last 10%. Also not good. The ending is supposed to be rewarding. It's supposed to justify the effort the reader put into sticking with 400 pages of story. It was anything but that. And the big reveal and twist wasn't all that shocking either. 

When I had finished the other books of this author, I had a sense of satisfaction and joy. I had wanted to savor the story, to re-read passages that I liked the most. When I finished Last Exit, all I had is a sense of relief that the slog was finally over and that I could delete the ARC from my Kindle. 

I will not recommend this book. Max Gladstone is a wonderful author though, so I suggest you read his Craft series instead.

https://nonstopreaderLast Exit is a SF/crossworlds fantasy with horror elements by Max Gladstone. Released 8th March 2022 by Macmillan on their Tor/Forge imprint, it's 400 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is an impressively well written crossworlds quest fantasy. The original group of university friends has dispersed over 10 years following the loss of one of their number in an alternate-world. They didn't just bring back small trinkets from their earlier adventures however, there's a creeping rot and malevolent decay which has followed them through the shadow worlds they visited and is now seeping into the "real" primary Earth. Zelda is world-weary and beaten but convinced to give it one last try to reassemble her friends from the past and save the world(s).

There is a compelling dystopian story here, very much action driven, but with well rendered characters who haul the reader along willingly or not. I didn't particularly *like* all the characters (especially Sarah, whom I wanted to smack most of the time), but I found myself deeply invested after about 20% and raced to finish it. The author is remarkably skilled at his craft, and I found no rough edges with the writing or characterizations. It's a dark but intelligently told imaginatively wrought and worthwhile story.

This is the story of a road-worn, cynical, exhausted Don Quixote, gathering for one last desperate (and probably destined to failure) tilt at doom.

Four and a half stars. Elements of body horror, violence, and gore. This would make a good choice for library acquisition, for fans of SF/fantasy, and a superlative choice for book-club reading and discussion.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.books.blogspot.com/2022/03/last-exit.html

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Last Exit follows Zelda who is trying to protect the world from ending. When she was in college, she and four others that connected, discovered a way to travel to alternate realities. But while in their search for a better world, they discovered the rot. The rot is coming for the world they live in and Zelda has spent the last ten years combating the rot. But when Zelda learns that Sal, her girlfriend who disappeared ten years ago, thought to be taken by the rot, is still out there, she contacts her friends from college for one last trip.
I was so easily sucked into this story. The concept of a bunch of alternate realities was so interesting. I think Gladstone did an amazing job with the world-building and the setting descriptions. I’m not usually very good at picturing settings but Gladstone made it easy to picture the different alts (what the characters call the alternate realities they travel to). I would love a whole book just about these friends’ adventures in the alts when they were first traveling through them.
This is a friend group that I feel like I would fit right in with. Zelda and Sal were in a relationship before they discovered the alts. There’s also Ramon who seemed like a total cinnamon roll. Ish was the one character that I felt like I could never really put my finger on. And Sarah, the mom of the group. Sarah never wanted to travel to the alts but did so anyway because she knew someone needed to look out for her friends. I really liked all five of them. Plus the new addition of June, Sal’s cousin joins Zelda with the goal of learning the truth of what really happened when Sal disappeared. Each of the six bring something different to the group and I just really enjoyed getting to know them all.
This story is told in both the present, with everyone reuniting, and also in flashbacks to the past where we learn the stories that are mentioned in the present. I think this was such a good way to tell this story. It built up the suspense of the group traveling back to where everything went wrong by sharing small bits and stories from the past. We follow them in the present, but we also follow them in the past on their path to losing Sal.
Overall, this book was strange as hell and I really loved it. It’s angry and broken, but also full of healing from the past and characters that each find different ways to move forward from their past. I think the world was compelling and the characters were engaging. I will absolutely be recommending this book in the future.

I'm keeping this short and sweet—Last Exit is a genre-defying, reality-bending experience that had me hooked from the first page to the last. It's a gorgeous, painful, glorious journey of a book. It hurt me and I loved it.

Max Gladstone is one of those authors whom I wish more readers knew of around here (in Sweden). On the one hand, it's always nice to be able to recommend a "new" author to customers at my bookstore, but on the other, I feel like it is a crime that he is not more widely known, at least over here. His character work is always engrossing, his dialogue feels natural and flows well, and he has the ability to balance darkness and light in his stories. This goes for Last Exit, as well as for This Is How You Lose the Time War and Empress of Forever (my personal favorite). To put it plainly, Gladstone is really good at what he does, and I feel like for every novel I read of his, he is constantly evolving his craft.

I don't know if Last Exit will be the novel to bring him the attention he deserves, but I sure hope so.

I enjoyed Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, was a bit more ambivalent with *Empress of Forever* and approached *Last Exit* with trepidation and more than a little procrastination. And given that, it took a few chapters for me to want to get into it. But pretty soon it started to become a page turner and I found myself racing to (or at least attempting to) the end.

I've seen a lot of early reviewers attaching the label *horror* to *Last Exit*. Back in the 70s, the threat of nuclear destruction and the after effects of the Vietnam war that brought out a certain despair in the psyche. Movies like *The Deer Hunter* and *Apocalypse Now* contained very little redemption and a whole lot of the horror. *Last Exit* is, my perspective, more akin to the world-weariness and despair of those 70s films than as a member of the horror genre.

That said, there are plenty of "demons" and "monsters" populating Max Gladstone's latest book. His last book, *Empress of Forever* took science fiction into a pretty imaginative and metaphysical realm and *Last Exit* takes it a bit farther. Set in a pretty contemporaneous world, Gladstone presents the world through a lens of "rot" and decay—completely recognizable yet ultimately faded and worn; as if the world most of us see has just a rapidly thinning veneer and underneath it lies nothing but inevitable ruin. As the characters traverse the "alts" (alternative realities) they realize that things were bad, and now they are getting worse. But is it really their job to do something about it?

*Last Exit* is a story of the meaning of reality: the reality of friendship, of love, of the world we live in and the world we wish it could be. Gladstone pulls in as many cultural touchstones as he can in order to create/build/weave a connection, all the while slowly dissecting it, leaving the reader in a precarious state. As a result this wasn't a book I managed to plow through at my usual rate. Max Gladstone has woven an undeniable tapestry, but whether the warp and weft suits you is going to be a matter of taste. But it's worth experiencing.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I walked away thinking, “Huh...well, that was worth it.”