The Last Human

The last human in the universe is on the run from a godlike intelligence in this rip-roaring debut space opera.

Sarya is the civilized galaxy's worst nightmare: a Human.
Most days, Sarya doesn't feel like the most terrifying creature in the galaxy.
Most days, she's got other things on her mind. Like hiding her identity among the hundreds of alien species roaming the corridors of Watertower Station. Or making sure her adoptive mother doesn't casually eviscerate one of their neighbors. Again.
And most days, she can almost accept that she'll never know the truth--that she'll never know why humanity was deemed too dangerous to exist. Or whether she really is--impossibly--the lone survivor of a species destroyed a millennium ago.
That is, until an encounter with a bounty hunter and a miles-long kinetic projectile leaves her life and her perspective shattered.
Thrown into the universe at the helm of a stolen ship--with the dubious assistance of a rebellious spacesuit, an android death enthusiast on his sixtieth lifetime, and a ball of fluff with an IQ in the thousands--Sarya begins to uncover an impossible truth.
What if humanity's death and her own existence are simply two moves in a demented cosmic game, one played out by vast alien intellects? Stranger still, what if these mad gods are offering Sarya a seat at their table--and a second chance for humanity?
The Last Human is a sneakily brilliant, gleefully oddball space-opera debut--a masterful play on perspective, intelligence, and free will, wrapped in a rollicking journey through a strange and crowded galaxy.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

As soon as I saw this comped to Douglas Adams, I knew I had to read this.

That blurb really just sealed the deal. I’ve always said that I don’t like space operas, but you know what? After finishing this book, I hereby renounce that. I’m giving space operas another chance.

The Last Human is a wonderful galactic romp filled with humor, action, and philosophy. Where humans are a villain (not necessarily THE villain) and the universe is so much bigger than you ever imagined.

This book has a little bit of everything. I was expecting it to be more humor, but I’d say it’s more space opera, even though it was fore sure still funny. Zack Jordan will definitely be an author I watch out for from now on.

❧ I knew, from the very first page, that I was going to fall head-over-heels in love with the humor in this.

Despite being comped to Douglas Adams, the humor in this feels more subtle. More tongue-in-cheek and less absurd, but not any less funny. I was expecting something more out there due to the comp, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case. This isn’t the bundle of laughs that Douglas Adams’ work might be, but it definitely made me chuckle, over and over again.

The writing style was another benefit to this. I really enjoyed how it just pulled me in. I sometimes struggle with present tense, but it worked really well here. There was a sense of immediacy that just dragged me straight into the action and made me feel engaged with what was happening in the story.

❧ There are so many different species in this book, and they were all so unique and fun to meet.

Some were certainly more terrifying than others, like Sarya’s adopted mother, the Widow. Terrifying, sure, but you know I absolutely loved it. Because all children’s nightmares should be caused by their mother, right? Pretty sure that’s how it works.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this was the idea that different creatures had varying intelligences, on a tier scale where tier one was considered sub-citizen, going up to at least tier four, where every tier is 12 times more intelligent than the last.

Which is all fine and well when you talk about tier 1 to tier 2, right? But it increases exponentially. So most humans would be right around tier 2, so a tier 4 would be 144-times more intelligent than we are. And if that doesn’t hurt your head to think about, you’ll do just fine with this book.

This leads to an interesting problem: anything with intelligence tier 1.7 and lower is considered sub-citizen, as it’s too “dumb.”

This, of course, is an arbitrary standard designed by a tier 4, which would be … pffft, math times smarter than a 1.7. I loved how the book tackled this idea, though. Because are these intelligences really less entities than any other? Are they not also deserving to be citizens? It really gave me pause and made me think.

And the absolute best thing about tiers of intelligence: one-upmanship!

Because obviously higher tiers think they’re better than lower tiers, since they’re so much smarter and more capable, on a scale that lower tiers can barely even deign to imagine. But the problem here lies with the common mantra that no matter how smart you think you are, there’s someone out there who’s smarter, right? There’s a subtle battle of the minds played on different levels across this book and I loved it.

❧ Sarya is a splendid main character, and her arc is just stunning.

Little by little, she becomes something greater. Something more. First, she is just a human hiding out as a low-level intelligence, daughter of a Widow. The story gradual thrusts her into bigger and better roles, though, and I loved how it all came together.

One of my favorite things about this is there’s a thread of free will versus someone in the background pulling the strings and that luck, such as we think of it, is really determined by a higher intelligence and we’re just too dumb to see that.

And okay, wow, doesn’t that idea just chafe? It’s a concept that Sarya really struggles with, and who wouldn’t? Just like anyone else, she wants to believe she has free will and can choose her own course. Does she, though? Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that once you read the book.

❧ There are a lot of side characters in this, but they all have such personality, and we do briefly get to see their perspectives.

Normally, I’m a bit picky about head-hopping, but I didn’t mind it so much here. The writing style really suited that sort of free-flowing narrative, where it didn’t really matter so much who was doing the telling. There weren’t really major awkward jumps between perspectives, but each one felt like a natural build on the last one, so it made sense instead of tripping me up.

This cast, though, is just absolutely full of surprises, and they kept me guessing right to the end.

I confess that I was hoping for more of a found family type theme based on the blurb, but I suppose this falls more into the Guardians of the Galaxy sort of crew, where they’re together because circumstance and that’s pretty much it. Which was fine. I’ve intentionally told you absolutely nothing about this crew because it’s all freaking spoilers and you just have to read the book if you want to know.

❧ The philosophy in this both blew my mind and was easy enough to follow and just … wow, there were some big thoughts here.

I’ve already touched on some of them, and I don’t want to get too into it, because there might be potential spoilers. Some things that were broached, though, were free will vs. predestination, what constitutes a citizen, intelligence, right vs. wrong and what that really means, and some pretty big-scale things like the size of the universe, etc.

For the most part, I loved all the philosophical elements, but I’ll admit that I struggled to wrap my tiny mind around the scale of some things, and there were definitely moments where the characters took time to wax a bit philosophical, and the story slowed down to a crawl as a result of it.

I do so love books that make you think, though, and if there’s one thing you should go into this knowing, it’s that you will come out the other end really questioning existence, which I loved. If you want an entertaining book with some deep thoughts, this fits that bill.

❧ In the last quarter of the book or so, the action really slows down and the book takes a more philosophical bent.

While I do love philosophy and broaching those big, icky philosophical questions that make us nervous … I have to admit that this really slowed down the reading for me. I found myself sort of stuck here and having to push myself through. It picked back up again towards the end, but it definitely felt like it lost some of its forward momentum for a while, where it ended up being just a lot of lengthy dialogue and monologues.

If you were the last human in the universe, what would you do with that knowledge?