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Archive for the ‘Duology’ Category

[READ: April 2023] Night Watch on the Hinterlands

I absolutely loved K. Eason’s The Thorne Chronicles (How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse).  I had no idea that she had a new duology out until this book came to my desk at work.

I had audiobooked the first duology and loved the world that Nicole Poole read to me.

But now I was jumping in to the print version.  Shockingly for me I haven’t been reading many books this year.  I have gotten so into the audiobook world that I’ve been listening far more than I’ve been reading.  And in some respects it was hard to get into this book because there’s a lot of made up stuff here and you really have to get into the world and the vocabulary and it was a bumpy start for me.

This book is set in the same world as the Rory Thorne books.  Yes, that is true.  But it is set far in the future so there is no overlap with characters or anything like that.  So that was a bit of a bummer.

There’s a lot of “hard” science fiction in this story, which is probably more of the reason why it was hard to get into it.  I accepted the new world, but you have to learn so much to get up to speed with everything that it can feel like a slog even if you are flying through the pages.

There are two main characters in this book.

Lieutenant Iari is a tenju templar (which you have to learn about and which I don’t think I fully did, but tenju are rather large humanoid race with tusks).  She was orphaned during the Expansion War and joined the templars because she believed in their mission.  The war is over now and her primary purpose is to stop The Brood.  Brood are deadly, seemingly invisible monsters that have come through a rip in the Void (which you have to learn about).  The rip is called The Weep, and I feel like I never quite got the hang of how or why the Weep happened.  The one thing that was clear was that the vakari inadvertently created The Weep during the war. (more…)

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[LISTENED TO: Summer 2021] How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge

The only thing better than finishing an awesome book is discovering that there’s a sequel and the quality and integrity of the sequel is just as strong as the original story.

Everything from the first story is in place here: the characters, the narrator, the tone, and, delightfully, Nicole Poole to read it.

Obviously, there are massive spoilers in this book for the first story.  So make sure you read that one first.

But to sum up, Rory successfully avoid an arranged marriage (while not upsetting her arranged husband).  She is able to shut down a coup on Urse and ultimately kick-starts a revolution.  Not bad for an under age Princess.

But she is done with being a Princess.  She rescinds her life and goes off to become a space pirate.  She has taken her former royal bodyguards, Thorsdottir and Zhang (so yes, there’s even more time given to these two great characters!) with her.  They pledge to protect Rory so they guess they just go with her?  And Jaed has come along with them too, mostly because he has nowhere else to go (literally) and he crushes on Rory, too.

So Rory’s team aren’t so much space pirates as do-gooders.  They are more like salvagers who might intercept smugglers (this is the equivalent of her telling her mom she’s going to follow Phish and make jewelry).

And for all concerned, Grytt is still in the story although as it starts, she is on Lanscott farming sheep (!) with Rory’s former betrothed Ivar (!!) former crow prince of the Free Worlds of Tadesh {No they are not “together” Grytt is mostly just minding the poor boy while she is “relaxing”).  Grytt by the way needed more implants after the last book and is probably 3/5 mecha to human.  Which she seems to prefer, honestly. (more…)

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