The Last Emperox, Scalzi. Yes. I do enjoy these, so was pleased when it occurred to me to wonder whether there was a new Interdependency book and the answer was yes, and pleased me even more that there was no waitlist.
Scalzi does a reasonable job of sliding in the “Previously on…” retro-exposition, which I especially appreciate, having roughly zero memory of the previous installments.
I don’t recall noticing Scalzi getting quite so deep into the nature of consciousness (especially) wrt strong AI. Maybe I’m more sensitized from following Grady Booch on Twitter. More likely I’m just forgetting.

Contractually obligated to mention at least one who that could have been a whom, but no vice versa, so that’s a plus. The occurrence of “If you hadn’t have known…” was definitely a novelty, and I have to conclude, for my sanity’s sake, that it was once the common malformation “…wouldn’t have…” and somebody made a note to change it to “…hadn’t…” and the execution of that note didn’t quite work out.