It has been two hundred years and more since a daughter was born to the royal Thorne family, head of a consortium
of worlds with subjects human and alien, but despite having spread across the multiverse with a melding of magic
(more commonly known these days as arithmancy) and technology, certain traditions must be upheld... such as the naming
ceremony for a princess, and the customary invitations left in the garden for twelve fairies to bring their gifts -
and, if one is strictly following protocol, the thirteenth fairy to bring her curse.
Nobody expected the fairies to actually exist, let alone accept the invitations - or to bestow gifts upon the girl. As
for the curse... while the thirteenth fairy burdens her with the ability to always see through falsehoods to the truth
beneath, that is far less a curse than the worlds at large contrive to throw at her, curses involving a spoiled
younger brother, a ridiculous tradition preventing girls from inheriting the throne, and a war against a tyrant and
regicide whose resolution demands she marry a weakling prince whom she only ever met once. But Rory Thorne isn't some
helpless, mindless romantic of a princess; she's well aware that royalty is about politics, and politics is all too
often about accepting poor bedfellows to keep the peace (and stave off even worse bedfellows). She travels to the
space station capital of Tadesh fully intending to go through with the marriage... but things go wrong from the moment
of her arrival, pointing to even greater and darker schemes afoot.
Unfortunately for her enemies, this damsel isn't anything like her pining ancestral namesake, waiting for a prince to
rescue her from the palace of brambles. If anyone's going to be saving anyone, it's Rory Thorne. Too bad she may just
have to destroy the peace and the multiverse to do it...
Review
To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I downloaded this audiobook, save that the title promised
fun and the premise - melding fairy tale tropes with a space opera plot - intrigued me. It quickly pulled me into its
amusing yet detailed and interesting world, a mash-up that probably shouldn't work but somehow does in Eason's hands.
With few exceptions, nobody in this story is just who or what they appear to be, with hidden motivations and layers to
them. Rory was raised with a keen understanding of the politics of her position, and harbors no illusions about
happily-ever-after endings for someone in her position, but that doesn't means he has to sit back and play her harp
(one of the skills a fairy granted her, which turns out to be more useful than anticipated) while other people use her
for their own gains. Between a half-cybernetic bodyguard and the royal vizier, not to mention a mother from a less
male-dominated culture than her father, she received a rather progressive education, which she puts to good use when
she finds herself thrust into the interstellar game board as someone else's pawn. The story rarely if ever lags, as
Rory pits her wits against a scheming usurper who has already killed more than one monarch and will not hesitate to
kill another to get the power he craves. Along the way, the narrative, written by an unnamed historian chronicler,
adds several amusing asides and flourishes to the tale. When I finished, I hit Overdrive almost immediately to see if
the second installment of the duology was available for download, but unfortunately there appears to be a wait list.
Dang it...
Rory Thorne was born a princess, complete with fairy gifts (and the obligatory curse), but - after stopping a plot
to usurp the throne of the Free Worlds of Tadesh, inadvertently inciting a rebellion, and fleeing to the newly-formed
Consortium of liberated planets - she's hung up her crown, literal and otherwise. Along with her former royal
bodyguards Zhang and Thorsdottir and Jaed Moss, once heir to a tyrant, they ply the fringes of space as privateers,
deliberately avoiding politics (as well as the Tadeshi royalists, who would still love nothing more than Rory's head
on a platter). But the multiverse has ways of reminding people who they really are, even when they're trying
everything to avoid it. Her ship, the Vagabond, has just stumbled upon a derelict, a Tadeshi ship destroyed by
weaponry the likes of which they've never seen... and carrying a revolutionary weapon that could destroy any biosphere
it touches. But someone else wants very much to reclaim the weapon, the Protectorate of the warlike vakari - and, in
an interesting wrinkle, the weapon itself has developed sapience and wants nothing to do with the utter destruction it
was created to spread. As (former) Vizier Rupert and security expert Grytt race to intervene, Rory and her companions
find themselves in an impossible situation. This time, there may be no fairy tale happy ending for the princess in
distress...
Review
After hearing the first installment of this (possible) duology on audiobook, an interesting mash-up of fairy tale
tropes and space opera with more than a dash of humor in the narrative, I resorted to buying hard copies when I couldn't
get the second installment through Overdrive in a timely fashion. Fortunately, it lives up to the high bar set by the
previous book. Rory's efforts to avoid further responsibilities are rudley interrupted by the discovery of this new plot
by the Tadeshi royalists, one that poses a threat to all inhabited worlds... but the greater threat may be the
Protectorate, whose innate arithmantic abilities make the best human and known xeno masters look like preschoolers just
learning their numbers. Even the Protectorate's current enemies, two species who are just reaching out to human space as
the Protectorate's theological driven Expansion wars increase pressure on their borders, are light years (literally)
beyond the best local magical technology, not even needing cumbersome tesser-hex gates to travel between star systems.
The presence of Rose, the bioweapon that has no desire to harm, further drives home the fact that, whatever the outcome
of Rory's encounter here, the multiverse as she and her friends (and even her enemies) know it is effectively as over as
the world of precolonial natives staring down their first gunpowder weapon. With these bombshells dropped on them,
they nevertheless must rise to the occasion, if only to stave off the greater, coming conflict for a time and buy a
little breathing room. While Rupert and Grytt try to thread the tricky diplomatic path between two potential ally
factions with little love lost for each other, Rory and her crew wind up in the belly of the beast itself when a
Protectorate ship arrives, first contact of a most hostile nature. They each bring their own attitudes and expectations
into the encounter, the latter often dashing uselessly against the cliffs of a dark new reality, but must trust
themselves and each other to find a way to survive. By the end, relationships and outlooks have shifted dramatically, as
has the greater political landscape of the many worlds, and hard choices lead to hard sacrifices.
This being presented as a historical narrative written by an unnamed chronicler, hints are dropped about what comes next,
enough that I suspect a third book in the works (even though I was under the impression that this was a duology), but -
like the first installment - enough wraps up here to leave the reader satisfied. All in all, I greatly enjoyed this
second adventure with Rory Thorne and her companions.
Generations ago, the multiverse was rocked by interspecies war - a war that only ended when the vakari Protectorate
inadvertently ripped the very fabric of spacetime with a powerful act of arithmancy. The fissures of the Weep extend
into an unknown plane of existence, from which reality-warping entities known as the Brood periodically emerge to
ravage anything in their path. The Protectorate, the splinter defectors of the Five Tribes, and the Confederacy
alliance of species were forced to the treaty table in order to deal with the threat. But so far no arithmancers,
hex-workers, artificers, priests, or others on any side have figured out how to close up the rifts. All they can do
is stand watch over the fissures, wait, and pray to whatever gods or entities that might listen that today will not
be a surge day.
The backwater world of Tanis was lucky enough to survive the worst of the Weep, but still has a minor fissure running
through the system. As such, it has its contingent of Aedis templars - soldiers with advanced nanotech and battle
suits and other augmentations, trained to fight Brood - as well as an official Five Tribes vakari presence. Templar
Lieutenant Iari, a native tenju and veteran of the last Brood outbreak on Tanis (with the scars and cracked tusk to
prove it), is devout and loyal, so when Knight-Marshal Tobin assigned her to be the escort of Ambassador Gaer, she
took the assignment without complaint, for all that babysitting a diplomat was not why she took oaths as a templar.
In truth, the duty isn't too terrible, for all that Gaer has terrible taste in night club music. But when an
excursion to B-town is interrupted by screams, Iari and Gaer stumble into a horrific and impossible murder: a wichu
artificer has apparently been brutally killed in their own workshop, but the apparent culprit should not have been
able to hurt so much as a fly, let alone a sentient being. The riev - amalgamations of magic and technology wound
around the reanimated corpses of deceased soldiers, created originally to fight the vakari - were repurposed after
the treaty, their ability to kill removed from their systems. Are the riev going rogue, or is someone controlling
them... and to what end? The more Iari and Gaer unearth, the more they realize the terrible plot at work, the danger
that might bring Protectorate, Tribes, and Confederacy to their knees.
Review
I greatly enjoyed Eason's Thorne Chronicles, which mashed up fairy tale tropes and space opera to create an
original and entertaining world. When I saw Eason was continuing the tale with this new sequel series, I snapped it
up (even if it took a while to rise to the top of the reading pile; I read by mood, not necessarily order of
acquisition). Nightwatch on the Hinterlands both is and isn't like its predecessor, in ways that were initially
a bit jarring but which quickly became compelling and fascinating. This is Rory Thorne's young adult-tinged multiverse
all grown up, gritty and battle-scarred. While there are callbacks and follow-ups on some threads from the first duology,
and while it uses the same magic-tech blend of "arithmancy", hexwork, turing devices, and such to create an interstellar
milieu powered by magic so advanced it's almost indistinguishable from technology, it's almost effectively a standalone
work. There is no chronicler adding amusing footnotes, no fairy tale structure or archetype underlying it (at least not
one I readily recognized), no princesses or queens or fairies placing blessings or curses upon children to shape their
destinies. Instead, there is a thorny tangle of alliances and rivalries, ranging from personal to interplanetary, a
collection of nicely rounded and individually flawed characters in a multiverse that has literally been shattered, and a
fast-paced, twist-filled murder investigation whose implications could destabilize, even destroy, what's left of that
shattered multiverse, wrapped in a noir-tinged tale haunted by past traumas and punctuated with violence.
From the start, it's clear that this isn't Rory Thorne's multiverse anymore, for all that there were definite shades of
darkness and significant depth in the earlier tales. Within ten pages, there's a gory murder and a mystery, not to
mention loads of confict and tension in the setting. A lot of setting and worldbuilding gets layered in along the way -
sometimes pushing toward new-term overload, especially as it's been a while since I read the Thorne Chronicles
- but it sorts itself out along the way. As before, nobody is stupid or stubborn just for plot's sake, each doing their
best with the information and resources they have. Iari and Gaer make for a good, if outwardly unlikely, investigation
team, wending their way through B-town's underworld with some help from Iari's ex, former soldier turned private
investigator Corso, as well as a pair of unusually independent riev. The traumas of war - between species and against
Brood incursions - have left their mark on everyone and everything, and the notion of facing a renewal of hostilities
and a brand-new enemy that may combine the worst of all previous conflicts is almost more than anyone can face. The
plot, as mentioned, starts fairly quickly and hardly ever lets up, leading to a high-octane climax that sets up the
next book in the Weep series. Despite the change in gears from the first duology, I found myself very much enjoying
this new facet of Eason's arithmancy-laced multiverse, and eagerly look forward to more.
The Brood - extradimensional entities whose very touch is death, given access to the civilized multiverse through
the fissures of the Weep - were the one enemy who could unite both sides in an interstellar war, the one abomination
that all sides could agree should be destroyed at all costs. Never in a million years would anyone conceive of
intentionally summoning Brood... until strange attacks through B-town, on the Weep-touched hinterland world of Tanis,
drew the attention of local authorities and the Aedis templar knights - devotees of a universal Elemental religion,
infused with symbiotic nanotech that helps them fight Brood - stationed there. Thus, the tenju knight Iari,
ex-military civilian investigator Corso, vakar ambassador (and SPERE agent, not to mention a top-notch arithmancer
in his own right) Gaer, and a handful of others stumbled upon the audacious plot of a wichu separatist determined to
undermine the Accords of peace and the Confederation of species. They barely survived the encounter... but their
work is far from done.
With the use of a blood-soaked altar portal and devilish artificing, the wichu managed to flee B-town for the
northern hinterlands of the Windscar, close to where the Weep fissure brushes the planet and far from civilization
and Aedis outposts. Now a captain, Iari leads a small strike team to explore old ruins that might be the
separatists' hideout - only to discover something even more dangerous than wichu artificing, a new enemy that speaks
to a threat to all civilized worlds.
Review
Much like the first installment, Nightwatch Over Windscar does not take time to slowly acclimate the
reader and catch them up, but pretty much plunges straight into the action (with a few memory jogs along the way)
and trusts the reader to keep up. It maintains the high-octane pacing, sometimes tangled threads of alliances and
rivalries and politics, and relationships (which grow even more complicated), while ratcheting up the stakes.
Knight Iari is still a fairly devout templar, loyal to the Aedis, but has come to trust Ambassador Gaer - a vakar,
once sworn enemies of most species (even though he is of the Five Tribes faction who defected from the greater
vakari Protectorate to ally with the Confederation - a partial precursor to the devastating mistake that unleashed
the Weep) - more than her own commander about some things... such as the changes her symbiotic nanotech, the syn,
seems to have undergone after their close encounter with the wichu separatist. The syn seems to be able to channel
bursts of great power, and may have reasserted the sentience it once possessed long generations ago. Iari still
does not know what to make of this change, nor does Gaer, and the matter of pursuing the terrorists seems more
pressing than parsing the peculiar intricacies of nanotech evolution at the moment. Gaer, for his part, feels his
loyalties shifting in ways he never anticipated when he came to the world of Tanis as official ambassador and
undercover SPERE agent for his government. He is no follower of the Elements, and still considers the symbiotic
nanotech and other body modifications of the knights a form of blasphemy, but Iari has become a steadfast
companion and even friend, and he finds himself pulled closer and closer into her orbit and inner circle as they
encounter fresh dangers in the Windscar ruins and beyond. Fellow tenju Corso, too, becomes more entangled with
the Aedis and the once-enemy vakari, as well as his former companion Iari, than he ever anticipated when they
first reunited in B-town in the previous book. His native knowledge of the Windscar make him an ideal scout,
though what he finds in the windswept north is far more than he bargained for. Also returning are the two riev
Char and Winter Bite, largely artificial constructs built around dead soldiers predating the Weep, who have
voluntarily joined the Aedis. The threat itself plays on inter- and intraspecies resentments and prejudices,
where large portions of the hinterland populations of tenju have been left to their own devices beyond the
southern cities and their garrisons; many grow increasingly resentful of the outworlder presence on their
planet, supplanting their older ways and older beliefs and offering no tangible benefit as they are preyed upon
by rogue Brood excursions. It's a deep wellspring of resentment for someone to tap - and someone seems to have
indeed tapped it, in a way that might doom the greater multiverse. This time, Gaer's prodigial arithmancy skills
and Iari's evolved syn may not be enough to stop an enemy neither could have imagined in their worst nightmares.
The story takes some interesting twists and jags on the way to a solid climax, with a resolution that all but
demands another installment... one I so far see no sign of, but which I hope is on its way some time soon (for
all that I fear this one flew too far under the radar, or hit too far to the side of mainstream reading tastes,
for the publisher to keep going with it).
