/lit/ - Literature

>>20559004
Endgames, Imager Portfolio #12 - L.E. Modesitt Jr. (2019)

The final book of the series began a couple months later. Charyn was the protagonist once again. I may have been simply oblivious, but the bulk of the protagonist's behavior in this is political. In some ways he's little more than a narrative device than to explore political ideals and aside from a few other matters becomes nearly an entirely political being. That also included his courtship, but she was into that. Maybe I didn't notice as much since I was almost entirely in agreement with what he wanted to do, within the context of the world.

The primary subject this time was labor relations. There was a version of the Luddites, which were a labor movement rather than being anti-technology, despite the latter being the dominant narrative. Religious reformation was a secondary subject and had similarities to Martin Luther's ninety-five theses. There's also more and more about tax policy.

Many topics were discussed, some of which were: price controls, water pollution, consumer protection, anti-dumping duty, minimum wage, auditing, tax evasion, news media, child labor, workweek hours, inequality, exploitation, economic violence, industrialization and steam engines. There's considerably more than that, but the ideas involved in several of these are oft repeated, the repetitiveness of which I noticed more this time. Issues are rarely solved the first time they are discussed though.

I greatly appreciated the epilogue as it was the kind I preferred at the end of a series. Overall this was an enjoyable series, though it certainly had times where I found it lacking. Its primary purpose was to be a fun read, though these last two books changed that somewhat to be very more about exploration of ideas relative to the series of the whole. I would've preferred it if the entire series was more similar to them.

Rating: 4/5