The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3)

by John Scalzi

if there was a later, which, given that Blaine Turnin’s neck had just turned a disturbing shade of floppy, seemed increasingly unlikely.

shade of floppy, eh? Do you think Scalzi pondered this phrasing extensively in many drafts? “I need something amusing and unexpected to remind the readers that I am, above all, amusing and unpredictable… hmmm, what should I insert into the prologue to signal that? Oh! I know!”

Blaine Turnin’s body was now presenting a shape that could only be described as “deeply pretzeled,”

Not a *shade* of pretzeled?

In Ghreni’s defense, he had never asked to be born.

“It’s the end of civilization as we know it. And it’s going to be great for business.”

Is this a parable of our descent into our Climate Change dystopia?

The board members continued staring at Deran’s body. “Well, I didn’t do that,” Belment said, eventually. “Did anyone else?” Proster asked. There was a general murmur of denial.

Scalzi does this broad humor very well.

“Force majeure is for when an unspotted space rock suddenly destroys a whole fucking habitat,” Kiva said. “That is one example,” Heuvel agreed. “We argue the collapse of civilization is another.” “The key word is ‘suddenly.’” “Actually, the keywords are ‘collapse of civilization.’”

Pretty sure he'd lose that. A space rock causes *immediate* unforeseen harm. The collapse of the Flow causes predictable changes in the short, intermediate, and long term, and only the first is unforeseen. Civilizations are always eventually gonna collapse, like our will due to our neglect of the massive effects of climate change. Kiva's "suddenly" is key,

But Kiva was aware that her time now was not that time. Her time was human civilization fucking imploding, taking the individual humans with it—including her. The time span she was likely to be around (barring assassination, unintentional overdoses and falls down flights of stairs) now exceeded that of the civilization she lived in. Which meant that some portion of her life—possibly decades—would become exceedingly fucking uncomfortable unless things were done by people in positions of power to avoid that.

Very Climate-Change analogous.

The thing was, it was turning out that people in positions in power were, well, extremely self-interested. Just like Kiva was. Which, again, would be fine, if human civilization was not coming to an actual fucking end. But it actually fucking was. So it was a problem.

As far as Kiva could tell, whenever selfish humans encountered a wrenching, life-altering crisis, they embarked on a journey of five distinct stages: Denial. Denial. Denial. Fucking Denial. Oh shit everything is terrible grab what you can and run.

For some definitions of "distinct".

More generally, several of the noble houses have secretly begun to transfer some of their wealth to End, and are planning to have key and critical members of each house follow.”

Will you be able to transfer the Memory Room to End?

That said, there may have been times when I wished that someone would rid me of a turbulent priest.”

You do know this one, right?

despite all the evidence that civilization was indeed collapsing around them at an increasing rate, so much of Grayland’s schedule was tied up in trivia like, say, congratulating a fucking sports team for being better at playing with their balls than anyone else.

Well put!

“Not from killing you.”

Hypothesis: She's not dead. This is Rachela, impersonating Gayland. The actual Cardenia is alive, and will be joining her fiancee for a quiet and private life.