The idea of multi-node entities battling throughout several Galaxies is well done, but it lacks the personal touch that makes the first two section so interesting. I felt that these personal stories were lost later in the book as the concepts took over from the characters. Sarya is able to build some relationships including with an AI pretending to be a little simpler than it is. In the slower sections, there are more hints of a Douglas Adams like bureaucratic future. Readers of harder, intellectual science fiction will enjoy the adapting nature of the book. The book evolves from the singular to the infinite. There are some huge concepts told in an epochal manner throughout this book and Sarya is central to them all. How can this chaotic and warlike race function within a collective? The other argument is that if there is no freedom of choice within the collective, why would you want to join? Text at the start of each chapter start to hint that there is a valid reason why humans were outlawed. There is a pleasant ambiguity to The Last Human as we are unsure who is right and wrong. If we have developed from our bodies, does the soul remain human? Jordon takes the reader on an Intergalactic narrative as Sarya tries to find herself and her people. The fundamental question is what makes us human. Several times Sarya develops into something else mind of her Mother, mind of a collective, mind of a God. This becomes the first evolution in the book. We then learn even more how the relationship developed as Sarya shares her mother’s mind. The opening action hits home and makes you really care for Sarya’s predicament. There is a tenderness between Sarya and her Mother. We learn about Sarya’s upbringing and how she has the spirt of a warrior, but the soft leaking body of a human. The Last Human by Zack Jordon is a book that expands throughout.

In a Universe were super intelligent entities are thinking millennia ahead, can Sarya trust this being? Living a quiet life on a giant space craft no one is aware of her true nature until a Tier 4 intelligence arrives and offers a chance of a lifetime to be returned to a colony of her own people. Brought up by a fierce alien creature she is human in form, but alien by nature. But perhaps we are different? Different enough to be proclaimed illegal among our alien peers and marked for execution if any of us are spotted. How many times has Kirk used “this human emotion called love,” to win the day, or how often has an invading alien army been conquered by “the common cold”? In reality we are not special, just a collection of leaking bodies that inhabit the third rock from the Sun.

Somehow, we are better than the multitude of other alien races out there.

Humans always think we are special when it comes to science fiction.

The last human zack jordan