Nightwatch on the Hinterlands
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
Set in the universe of Rory Thorne, this new sci-fi mystery follows an unlikely duo who must discover the motive behind an unusual murder.
THE TEMPLAR: When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don't kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.
THE SPY: Officially, Gaer is an ambassador from the vakari. Unofficially, he's also a spy, sending information back to his government, unfiltered by diplomatic channels. Unlike Iari, Gaer isn't so sure the riev's behavior is just a malfunction, since the riev were created using an unstable mixture of alchemy and arithmancy.
As Gaer and Iari search for the truth, they discover that the murderous riev is just a weapon in the hands of a wielder with wider ambitions than homicide--including releasing horrors not seen since the war, that make a rampaging riev seem insignificant...
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1 primary bookThe Weep is a 1-book series first released in 2021 with contributions by K. Eason.
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<i>“Courage is facing that which is within your strength to face but doing so does not guarantee your victory.”</i>
What a delightful little murder mystery in a sci-fi setting with delightful characters and a well fleshed out world. Evidently this book is set in the same universe as some of the author’s other books, but this is very clearly able to be read without prior knowledge. This book just clicked with me in a way that’s hard to describe, but I think has a lot to do with giving my imagination just enough rope to imagine being in the same city on the same world with the same problems, but not too much rope that I felt lost. It’s a delicate balancing act with sci-fi that I think the author does very well.
Lieutenant Iari, a tenju Templar, and Gaer the ambassador she’s supposed to be protecting investigate a mysterious death outside the bar they’re relaxing at, and get wrapped up in a complex web of half truths and outright lies. A dead wichu artificer is at the heart of the mystery, and witnesses say she was slain by a riev (half man, mostly machine) gone rogue. Investigating the rievs leads Iari to Char, a damaged riev who chips in on the investigation and causes Iari to question a lot of what she (and basically everyone) thought they knew about the riev and what they were capable of. There’s a lot more to the investigation, but in the interest of not including spoilers, I’ll just say that it’s better read than summarized.
If you couldn’t tell from my summary, there’s a <i>lot</i> of world building and lore thrown around, sometimes in a very short period of time. You’ll either love it (as I did) or find it too chaotic and confusing and bounce off hard. I also love how real and alive the characters felt, and the snappy dialogue in parts was one of my favorite experiences in reading this book. Each character felt different and unique, and there’s even something there for the shippers in the audience.
It is quite complex though, and it moves fast. The names can be particularly difficult, though I listened to the audiobook and had an easier time there, I think, particularly when it came to wichu naming conventions. If you need things explained, or if you need time to let complex ideas involving politics, history, or intricate magic systems settle, this might not be for you.
But it definitely was for me, and I’ve already got book two on my radar to pick up soon. I want some movement on my Iari x Gaer ship.
