SPOILERS OF COURSE:
As a big enjoyer of Sci-Fi, and especially the Fermi Paradox, the ending of this book was very thought-provoking and leads to some interesting directions the author can explore going forward. Namely, that a pan-galactic civilization was steadily expanding their scope of the galaxy, but upon discovering the apparent end of the Milky Way in the near-future, halted all expansion and focused instead on traveling to an entirely new galaxy.
The answer to the Fermi paradox being; the Pan Galactic Federation missed humans by a margin of a couple thousand years.
The neat thing that Taylor has set up, though, is that the Bobiverse has become a quasi-Pan Galactic Federation in its own right. There are 5 species which are in the process of joining up with the humans, and once the Bobs learned of the galaxy collision they decided the proper course of action is to take all known species to a new galaxy; just like the PGF. The implication is that there were likely other PGFs for millions – maybe billions – of years before the PGF that the Bobs stumbled upon. Once those PGFs performed the proper math on the Nemesis Galaxy they would have learned about the collision too and also gotten out of the Milky Way.
Now it gets fun. In theory there might be tens of thousands of PGFs throughout history encompassing hundreds of thousands of species heading out of the Milky Way on their own journeys. Some might have faster methods of travel, some much slower. Given only 2 probable locations to resettle – namely the LMC and SMC – a future book exploring the resettlement of a dwarf galaxy by the hundreds of thousands of species that fled the Milky Way over billions of years would be interesting. Doubly so if the LMC and SMC already have their own PGF that never had to leave because their galaxy was never under threat, and therefore have been existing for billions of years unmolested. What happens if there is no room in these destinations for new arrivals? That would be the likely answer at any rate.
Lots of neat idea, and lots of directions this story can head. I love books that allow us to think of fun hypotheticals like these. Interested to hear thoughts of others who have gotten this far into the series.
by Chaoss780