Book Review: The Last Human
One of my favorite scifi tropes is how aliens deal with humans, especially if we’re deemed threatening. I’ve seen variations ranging from funny to serious, and from the blurb, it looked like The Last Human dealt with this upfront, with some humor. Sign me up!
Sarya the Daughter has grown up with a horrible secret: she’s human. And humans are incredibly dangerous, or so the citizens of the Network believe. Sarya has concealed her identity for years, with the help of her mother (a very large and deadly space spider). But when she meets a hive mind who recognizes her for what she is, everything spirals out of control. Her home destroyed, Sarya sets out to find the rest of her people and makes a few enemies along the way.
To be honest, I thought this book would be sillier than it is. It’s definitely marketed to be a little silly — just look at that cover art! So I went in expecting Douglas Adams and that’s very much not what I got. It’s definitely not bad, but it’s not absurdist, and while it does have moments of humor, they taper off toward the middle. So if you, like me, thought this book would be a comedy, you might want to recalibrate your expectations.
That said, the worldbuilding is honestly pretty fascinating. The Network is a cool concept to unite disparate star systems (the Blackstar!), and it has a kind of weird caste system built into it based on intelligence that gives it some dystopia feels. Jordan also intersperses little “so you’re considering joining the Network” psuedo-epigraphs between chapters, and it’s a great way of providing background world info without info-dumping directly in the main text.
The various alien races are pretty neat, too; Jordan has definitely put in some work. We get the most Widow culture, since Sarya’s adopted mother is a Widow, and they have a very cohesive worldview focused around being fierce and enduring pain. But we also get hive minds, super-intelligent fuzzballs, various robots and AIs, even the Network itself! The best I can do here is probably compare it to Becky Chambers’ books, at least in terms of how well-thought-out the aliens are.
Sarya is an excellent MC to follow — raised by a Widow to be a Widow, as much as possible, Sarya has determination and toughness in spades. Her quest to find her people is eminently understandable; it’s not at all hard to empathize with her. Her journey begins with naivete, and she slowly has her notions about the universe beaten down until she has to face an unpleasant reality. She’s very much the focus of the novel, and you’re going to have problems if you don’t like her. (As a heads-up, CW for serious self-harm about a third of the way through).
Where the book falls down is in the secondary characters. We don’t spend more than a chapter or two with them initially as Sarya escapes her station. Then, later in the book, we’re supposed to believe that Sarya has developed strong enough relationships with them that she cares what they think…but we’ve never seen that relationship develop. It weakens the emotional turn toward the end, and while it doesn’t ruin the book, it definitely threw me out of the story for being unrealistic and unbelievable.
Unfortunately, this applies to the so-called villains as well, Network and Observer, who play tug-of-war with Sarya’s loyalty, each of them trying to manipulate her to serve their own ends. Neither of them feels especially fleshed out; they’re more personifications of Order and Chaos than they are anything else. Observer in particular has something of the comic supervillain about him, all grandiose gestures and stilted dialogue.
Plot-wise, the beginning and the end are both very strong. The beginning establishes Sarya’s character and inner conflict very well and then immediately upends her world, which is exactly what I want in a novel. That first act is never boring, and it even establishes its characters well enough that an early death feels meaningful. On the flip side, after Sarya has her conversation with Network past the midpoint, the story speeds up considerably as Sarya struggles to decide whether to believe/aid Network or join Observer. Conflict predictably ensues.
But the middle? It’s a little slow, sorry. Part of this is because of the secondary character issues mentioned above — they aren’t established well enough for us to care, and Sarya’s relationship with them is fractious at best. And again, their actions aren’t always believable. For example, they help Sarya, even though they don’t really have any reason to do so and don’t seem to like her. The other part of it comes from the fact that the middle is full of waiting. The best bits here are Sarya reliving her mother’s memories, but most of what comes out of that so-called revelation is fairly predictable. It’s more of a device that lets Jordan emphasize Sarya’s Widow qualities later.
Overall though, it’s still a pretty enjoyable book. The concept and setting are strong, and the execution is mostly good. Just be aware that it’s not Douglas Adams, and make sure you like Sarya before proceeding.
4/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“The hatch is orange, danger-colored, unlike every other residential hatch in the corridor. If she still had her Network unit - goddess damn you, Hood, by the way - she would see a large, high-contrast warning scrolling over the door. It would tell her, in extremely graphic terms, exactly what her mother is not responsible for should anyone be fool enough to open this door. This door and that warning are two of the concessions that a Widow must make, should she wish to reside in the company of other species. It’s not the Widow’s fault, after all, that her species has spent a billion years evolving into the fearsome hunters that they are. She can’t be blamed for possessing built-in weapons capable of killing any prey within ten meters within a fraction of a second. She is allowed to mingle with Network society because, like any other evolved complex individual, she is in control of her instincts. She has evolved higher brain function that keeps that sort of thing from happening unintentionally. But, of course, that only applies when the Widow is conscious. When that same Widow is sleeping, that higher brain function is dormant. It’s busy dreaming, fantasizing about hunts and battles and goddess knows what else while leaving the killer instincts in charge in its absence.
Which is why tragic accidental murders are a staple of Widow literature.”
