Isako won’t do it. Maybe it’s vain, but she doesn’t care; she’s going to die with long hair. It’s impractical, it costs her time and money, but everyone’s got to have personal principles. Her hair is the only thing defying the pace of aging that afflicts the rest of her. It’s still thick and glossy, a black so pure that Tai used to say it was nearly blue. Tai loved her hair. He used to run his hands through it, bury his face in it, stroke it after they made love.
page 84
Table of Contents
Why The Last Contract of Isako?
I read the first book in Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga series Jade City back in the summer of 2025 and it was one of my books of the year. So when I found out that Fonda Lee was coming out with another book this year, I put The Last Contract of Isako on my TBR and I put in a hold for it at the library as soon as the book appeared in the library system.
I had originally planned to read the rest of the Green Bone Saga before this book came out but I never put in the holds for those books as I was occupied with a whole host of other books in the past few months. In fact, I actually had a library borrowed copy of Jade War when the hold for this book came in. I ended up returning it unread because I wanted to read the new book as soon as possible and I did not want to oversaturate myself with Fonda Lee’s writing before I got to the new book.
The hold for this book came in on May 1st, 2026 and I picked it up the next day. I started reading it and finished it on Sunday, May 3rd. So due to a rare combination of circumstances – the Toronto Public Library system getting their copies a few days before release date (May 5), and my fast reading pace, I reading a new book before its release. This review was written on May 4th.
Author blurbs from – James S. A. Corey, Shannon Chakraborty, Tasha Suri, Rebecca Roanhorse, P. Djèlà Clark, Wen-Yi Lee, Bethany Jacobs, Sarah Gailey.
So without further ado, let’s get into it.
The Book
The Last Contract of Isako is a standalone dystopian science fiction novel set on the desolate planet of Aquilo where walking outside into the frigid cold means certain death and the fragments of humanity that have settled on the planet live in the iron grip of the corporation that runs the colony aka The Company.
This is very much a bleak corporate dystopian world, it is very reminiscent of other such science fiction in the cyberpunk vein. The Company hierarchy is very important here so I am going to outline the basics here – Board of Directors -> The Executive -> Directors -> Subdirectors -> Managers -> Wagefolk. Under The Executive you have The Agency branch. Under Directors and below The Agency are the Atiers. Under Subdirectors and Atiers are Midtier and General Contractors. Freelancers are outside this hierarchy.
Atiers are the best of the best. The elite of the black-badge world. For every hundred general contactors there are ten mid-tier contractors. For every hundred midtracs, there’s one atier. ​A good atier can do math in their head, hobnob at a black-tie gala, and kill a man a dozen ways. Strategist, chief of staff, personal bodyguard, diplomatic aide, you name it. Brains and muscle in one package. They’re expensive to hire and licensed in strictly limited number by the Agency that selects and trains them starting at the age of sixteen and straps them up with longknives, blistering business savvy, and fearlessness.
page 14-15
The bleakness of the corporate dystopia world is very thorough. Every aspect of human life on Aquilo is defined by the hierarchy of the Company, life for most people in this colony is precarious and if you happen to fall out of the good graces of the Company – fired or contract terminated, life on the outskirts of the system is a very difficult one indeed.
The first half of The Last Contract of Isako follows the story of the titular Isthmus Isako, an atier longswordswoman also known as the Quickblade for her speed and proficiency with the blade. When her client unexpectedly retires, she plans to do the same – retirement in this case means going out into the deadly cold and dying. However, she then gets one last contract, one which she cannot refuse and our story begins.
Worldbuilding
I think one of Fonda Lee’s biggest strengths as a writer is worldbuilding. That was very much one of the aspects of Jade City I loved and it is very much present in The Last Contract of Isako. There are so many little details about the world sprinkled throughout the book that slowly but surely build out a very interesting world.
Little things like the way names are – Isthmus Isako, Dew Loren, Wolf Wyatt, Forest Greves etc. The second name prefaced by some kind of other noun – animal or landscape feature. The way the calendar works – Standard date naming convention is year.week.day, e.g. 498.46.3 (short form) refers to Monday, Week 46, the year 498 AF (After Founding).
There are also aspects like the synthbodies – artificial bodies made to house the brains of the higher tiers of the Company hierarchy to extend their lives.
Savannah Minto is a one-hundred-and-six-year-old woman on extended life support, housed in a replacement body made of advanced prosthetics and cloned tissue that will preserve her for decades past her original expiry date. ​A brain in an expensive jar.
page 36
All of these details made me feel very immersed in the world. I could visualize the environments that the characters inhabited. The way everyone talked, their slang and phrases, things like “Fuck Earth” and shortened words like “tracs” to mean contractors, “termed” to mean terminated. I loved all of it. It is a shame that this is a standalone because there is the potential for a incredible series of books in the world Fonda Lee has built here.
Structure & Pacing
I think Fonda Lee did a fantastic job with the structure and pacing of The Last Contract of Isako. This book combines cutthroat corporate intrigue with a thriller and a mystery. As mentioned earlier, the first half of the book takes place from the perspective of Isako carrying out her last contract. The second half follows her apprentice Dragonfly Martim in the months leading up to Isako’s contract.
The way this was structured was perfect. It was such a thrill to read Isako try and solve the mystery and then switch perspectives to Martim to see the details of the mystery get built up. I never could quite predict where the story was going and I did not predict the various twists and turns. The betrayals, double crossings, personal intrigue between Isako and her colleagues. All of it was put together beautifully and it was one hell of a ride.
Characters
I think the primary weakness of The Last Contract of Isako lies within its colourful cast of characters and their development. There is quite the number of characters in book, however the book wisely decides to stick to two main characters – Isako and Martim – and these two are the ones that get the lion’s share of character development. Of the secondary characters, only Rain Kob gets more character development and is the most interesting of them.
Most of the players in this game of corporate chess felt more like cardboard cutouts there to move the plot forward rather than characters of their own. This would be fine if I connected to Isako and Martim more as characters but I simply did not. There were moments in the story where the pace slowed down a bit and Isako would perform some introspection but it never felt like Fonda Lee quite knew what to do with Isako’s interiority other than feelings of regret and remorse.
The best moments of character interaction and development we got were the interactions between Isako and Rain Kob – moments of friends getting shit done together and having each other’s back combined with good banter. Their relationship dynamic was very charming and I wish we got more of their friendship than we did.
All that said, I don’t think this weakness was enough to detract from the aforementioned positives of the story. But as someone who is very character driven, it was definitely a weakness I noticed. Unlike with Jade City this is a standalone so we aren’t going to get more time with any of these characters.
Concluding Thoughts
The Last Contract of Isako delivered the goods. It was another remarkable demonstration of Fonda Lee’s ability to build well thought out worlds with the right blend of political intrigue and deadly action; the combat scenes in this book wouldn’t be out of place in a cyberpunk show. I haven’t read a lot of science fiction this year and it has been fairly hit and miss as a genre. This is by far the best science fiction I’ve read this year and nothing else comes close.
Reading this book made me want to finish the Green Bone Saga trilogy even more than I already wanted to. I could definitely use more of Fonda Lee’s writing in my life and the new goal is to finish the series before the end of the year. I think coming back to the series this summer to match the time when I read the first book would be fitting.
That’s all from me, see y’all in the next one.
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