The Last Human

The Last Human

by Zack Jordan
Genres: Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera
Published on March 24, 2020
Pages: 448
Format: eBook Source: Library

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.

I was drawn in by the idea of a lone human living on a space station and not knowing why she was the only one. I loved her adoptive mother – a spider-like warrior woman who is trying to make this weird, soft and squishy creature into a proper daughter.

Shenya the Widow narrowly restrains a click of approval. On the one blade, this is a Widow rage—a towering and explosive wrath—and it is beautiful. One spends so much energy attempting to install traditional values in a young and coalescing mind, and it is always rewarding to see effort yield results. But on another blade, well…insolence is insolence, is it not?

Sarya doesn’t know why she is being hidden under a false identity. But when she is found by a bounty hunter her whole world falls apart quickly.

This book had wonderful world building. I liked learning about their life on the station and how the society was arranged. After the first half of the book though, things started to drag. The book because very philosophical and wanted you to know that it obviously had Big and Important Ideas. The story got more boring when it should have been exciting. It made me power through it more than enjoy the ride.

“What the hell kind of morals do you people have? You had a fire. Your people got to grow up in a nice little safe place, with food and light and heat and everything you needed—just like the rest of us. And then when the rest of us said hi, what did the Humans think?” She feels herself drawn inward, away from the fires and toward Mer’s glistening teeth. His hot breath blows the matted hair off her forehead. “You thought, maybe we can take their fires too.”

Should a war-like species be allowed to survive if it threatens the survival of more peaceful species? Whose freedom is more important? Is it bad to submit to an authoritarian system if it grants you what you desire most?