Last Exit
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 backroads 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 anymore. Because, at long last, their friend is coming home. And hell is coming with her.
Praise
Thoughtful, action-packed, terrifying, and hopeful all at once. . .a complex, believable cast that asks the reader what it would truly take to find a world that’s better than our own.
—Booklist, starred review
Blends fantasy, horror, and science fiction to produce a stunning, insightful novel that wants a better world just as much as its protagonists do.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Last Exit is Max Gladstone’s best work yet, a novel carved by hand out of salt and rock and bone, a road broken clean through a dying country’s hear. This is what the Great American Novel wishes it could be: honest, furious, in love.
—Amal El-Mohtar, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author
It’s strange and wondrous and chilling and creepy and beautiful all at once. A book fit for our end-of-times times.
—Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author
How far would you go to save the world? Max Gladstone’s Last Exit answers resoundingly with an epic homage and powerful challenge to modern fantasy. What a stunning ride!
—Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula Award winning author of Updraft and the Gemworld series
Get lost in Max Gladstone’s deliriously strange novel of alternate universes and dysfunctional explorers. This gloriously metaphysical adventure will stick with you long after you return to the so-called real world.
—Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders
Last Exit is the rare triumph that captures the feel of an era and a generation: it’s a book I sometimes had to put down for a while because it was too real, in spite of all its fantasy. It gives us the claustrophobia of impending collapse without losing the glimmer of hope. A wild ride into the darkness hiding under everyday life, like Gaiman’s Neverwhere with interstates and America instead of London and the Underground.
—Django Wexler, author of Ashes of the Sun