Everything we know about 'Last Exit' (UPDATED)
Max Gladstone’s newly-announced book Last Exit may not be part of the Craft Sequence, but we are so excited we’re going to cover it anyway.
LET’S GO.
What’s the elevator pitch?
It Is About Some Friends Who Went To School Together In The Early Oughts And Went On The Magic Road And Fucked Up Bad and Now It's 2019
Contains: monsters, loss, friendship, big skies, uncomfortable situations with knives, alternate realities, beetles, and [a] spear fight on the Dodge Challenger.
Well that sounds cool.
Right? Particularly intrigued by the uncomfortable situations with knives.
You can read an excerpt here as of December 2021.
You’ve got my attention. Give me more info.
According to publishers Macmillan:
American Gods meets The Dark Tower in Last Exit, a dark, contemporary fantasy of the open road, alternate realities, and self-discovery, from a Locus Award-nominated and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Max Gladstone.
Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda’s lover and the group's heart.
Until their final, failed mission, when Sal was lost. When they all fell apart.
Ten years on, Ish, Ramon, and Sarah are happy and successful. Zelda is alone, always traveling, destroying rot throughout the US.
When it boils through the crack in the Liberty Bell, the rot gives Zelda proof that Sal is alive, trapped somewhere in the alts.
Zelda’s getting the band back together—plus Sal’s young cousin June, who has a knack none of them have ever seen before.
As relationships rekindle, the friends begin to believe they can find Sal and heal all the worlds. It’s not going to be easy, but they’ve faced worse before.
But things have changed, out there in the alts. And in everyone's hearts.
Fresh from winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Max Gladstone weaves elements of American myth--the muscle car, the open road, the white-hatted cowboy--into a deeply emotional tale where his characters must find their own truths if they are to survive.
I want it. When is it coming out and how can I get my hands on it?
It’s coming out on 22 Feb 2022, which is 2/22/22 in American, and 22/2/22 for the rest of us. Either way, it’s a very satisfying date.
Updated as of 2 Feb 22 - due to supply chain issues, it will release in the US on 8 March 2022.
You can pre-order in the US here.
It’s been confirmed that it will be released by Titan Books in the UK on 3 May 2022.
You can pre-order it from Waterstones in the UK here (and probably from anywhere else that sells books).
As soon as we know more for other countries we will share an update.
Also, the cover is incredible. Who drew it?
We would kill for a poster, if any marketing people are reading this.
The cover art is Sylvain Sarrailh. You can find their art here, and follow them on Twitter here.
Has Max Gladstone said anything else about the book or the writing process?
You betcha. Some of the following comes from tweets, and some from his newsletter (you can subscribe to that here).
It has been a road for this book. Writing and rewriting it all through '19 and '20. Line by line. Ink refill by ink refill. I can't believe it's actually something I can share with y'all now.
Writing it harrowed me and got me through a hell of a year. I hope it gives you that same fire.
A book is the accumulated weight of a couple hundred thousand small decisions. It’s hard to see the whole from a distance, when you know every corner, when you’ve weighed every word and polished every sentence.
A little under ten years ago, I had an idea for a book. I wrote it. The world changed around me, and out from under the book. It didn’t feel right any more. [In 2019] I found a notebook and a pen, and I started to write that book again. It became something else. It went dark, and it went big, and it went deep.
He says more in his newsletter so, again, you should really subscribe to it here.
He also confirmed there are many roads, if you are particularly drawn in by roads. Freeways specifically. Whatever those are in other forms of English. Motorways?
What do other people who have read the book say?
This is a rarefied group, of whom we are deeply, deeply envious. Both because of their knowledge of this book and their own talents (read all of their works please).
Rebecca Roanhorse, author of Black Sun and more:
Max Gladstone has a new book coming soon and look at that gorgeous cover. I've read it and it's strange and wondrous and chilling and creepy and beautiful all at once. A book fit for our end-of-times times.
Bo Bolander, speculative fiction author of many things:
so i read an early version of this several ages back and it was probably one of my favorite things i read that entire year, i have no doubts this iteration will equally blow all my footwear clean off because that's just how @maxgladstone rolls
Fonda Lee, author of the incredible Green Bone Saga:
OOooooO this is the book you were telling me and Amal about during that dinner at Viable Paradise SQUEEE
Amal El-Mohtar, who co-wrote How To Lose The Time War with Gladstone, along with other things, has been number one cheerleader so far, sharing the following on Twitter and in her own newsletter:
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 heart. This is what the Great American Novel wishes it could be: honest, furious, in love.
Less restrainedly: this book is dark, ferocious, magnificent. Every sentence has a shaped & deliberate weight. The clarity & care of its language is sculptural. The story is so angry & so heartbroken & so beautiful. This is so thoroughly a novel born from & about being in one's thirties at this specific moment in These Specific Times, & I hope that doesn't sound tiresome, because to me (a woman in my goddamned thirties) it was enormously cathartic & revelatory. Also, just, like, by the by, Max wrote this whole goddamn book BY HAND. By hand!!!! IN JOURNALS, WITH FANCY PENS & INK. A gift to once & future archivists! As well as a gift to your once & future selves, if you pre-order it, which imo you should do
This is a novel about grown-ups growing up. It's a novel of one's thirties, of reckoning with one's twenties, of probing the foundations of one's self to find the cracks and fissures running up to our hearts. It's a novel about America, what it dreams it is and what it isn't.
And, with far more brevity but the same intensity, Gladstone’s agent Dongwon Song said only:
y'all ain't ready for this one
Please can February come round faster?
We agree, imaginary question asker. We agree.
We’ll keep you updated with everything we hear about Last Exit, and any other Gladstone writings – especially the Craft Sequence.
Oh, and on that… Gladstone replied to a comment saying Craft Sequence was up next.
Get ready, gang. We’re in for a rollercoaster 2022.