Last Exit

Written by Max Gladstone

Narrated by Natalie Naudus

Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Max Gladstone weaves American myths—the muscle car, the open road, the white-hatted cowboy—into a deeply emotional tale.

When Zelda and her friends first met, in college, they believed they had all the answers. They had figured out a big secret about how the world worked and they thought that meant they could change things.

They failed. One of their own fell, to darkness and rot. Ten years later, they’ve drifted apart, building lives for themselves, families, fortunes. All but Zelda. She’s still wandering the back roads of the nation. She’s still fighting monsters. She
knows: the past isn’t over. It’s not even past.

The road’s still there. The rot’s still waiting. They can’t hide from it any more.

Because, at long last, their friend is coming home. And hell is coming with her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705049020

Max Gladstone

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award–winning author, MAX GLADSTONE, has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Last Exit, Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the viral New York Times bestseller This Is How You Lose the Time War. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect.

Reviews for Last Exit

[Lora Friedenthal · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't think this book is well suited to audio, actually. The book is like 95% fever dream descriptions and perceptions from unreliable narrators. It's hard to absorb. And with audio, the words just kind of fall over you without sinking in, so it just feels like confusing poetry describing nothing that sticks with you.

[Oso Isko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an amazing read. It's so well written. I can feel the characters' desperation and longing, and the psychedelic surrealness of their journey. Gladstone really nailed that feeling that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than a better one. It's a shame it's not more widely read.

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So, when I started this novel my expectations were rather high, and I thought that I was in the right frame of mind to get the most out of it (I want pure, bracing, gloom out of my cosmic horror). Having wrapped it up I find myself counting the issues with this story. Don't get me wrong, I can respect Gladstone's seriousness of intent, and I think that each individual chapter is impeccable from the quality of the prose, but I have doubts as to whether this all really aggregates into a successful novel. This is not to mention that the machinery used to drive the plot forward can be a little too obvious, that some of the symbolism is a little too heavy handed, and that I have questions about worldbuilding. Should you then read this novel? You should probably give it a try if dark fantasy or Max Gladstone are already flavors you enjoy.

[travelgirl2fics · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

dense angst. close to the end, and the angst is so thick, it's almost unreadable. sad, as the book started with such promise

[lavaturtle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a hard read. Especially the first half or so, it's a long slog through a whole lot of real-world awful, with a tone of complete despair and exhaustion. Eventually, there starts being more to the plot, and the ending is ultimately satisfying, but the setting is very definitely "after everything went to shit and the heroes lost". I'm glad I finished it... but I'm not sure I would have started it if I knew how dark it is. I do like the characters, though, their tangled relationships and the different ways they see the world. And the magic system is interesting.

[verkruissen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Books with alternate worlds have always been a draw for me. I was immediately engulfed in this story. When describing it to my fellow librarians I said, it was like if The Stand by Stephen King and Imajica by Clive Barker were rewritten together by Neil Gaiman. It's a complex, gorgeously written story about a woman named Zelda who reunites her friends from college after ten years to travel to an alt world where they lost their friend and Zelda's love named Sal. Sal has made her presence know to Zelda and Sal's niece, June. Though Sal seems to be more of a monster now than the woman they all loved. Once they enter the alternate worlds, they are pursued by a shadow faced man they refer to as "the cowboy" due to his white Stetson hat. The cowboy is hellbent on stopping their rescue of Sal and uses trickery and lies to find ways to stop their group from meeting its goal. All in all a wonderfully imaginative story. It is a "dense" story, very metaphysical and descriptive narrative. It did take some time to get through but overall very worth it!

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Change of pace for Gladstone, towards urban fantasy not entirely dissimilar in theme from Jemisin’s most recent but also very different. The protagonist can walk to alternate worlds, but stopped when she lost her beloved Sal and now just tries to fight off the rising rot in her own America, which is much like ours. But when her attempts to apologize to Sal’s mother land her with Sal’s niece instead, and the monster that ate Sal starts coming after her, she decides to make one final push to fix what she broke.