the last hour between worlds (2024)
Feb. 13th, 2025 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porticoi'm really good at going to a bookshop, buying a book (or 3) and then stowing them safely in a stack on my shelves and reading library books and ebooks instead. yesterday, i went to the bookshop, bought 2 books, brought them home and decided to turn habit on its head by safely stowing them on my shelf and instead reading the LAST book i bought instead. so i'm like. 1 behind. 2 behind. anyway.
this was The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso and i can only assume i bought it because murder is mentioned on the back. i am who i am. but this book isn't a murder mystery. don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of murders, but it does some not-time loops to keep the murders from sticking (mostly) and it's pretty clear who is doing them. the last hour between worlds follows kembral thorne, a sort of private eye/bodyguard currently on leave due to having just had a baby. she's out on her own for the first time since her daughter's birth, and is tired and wrong-footed because of it. she's at a new year's party, surrounded by socialites and city elders, and Rika Nonesuch, her maybe-rival, maybe-friend (a burglar/assassin, a Cat to kem's Hound) is there looking really hot. they didn't part on the best terms. also there? a big ol' clock. shortly, everybody dies and kem has no choice but to be on the job again.
cat, hound, and assorted other guests end up trapped in what is essentially a high-concept bottle episode. the book begins with kem already at the party, and every subsequent loop begins the same way. caruso establishes that the loop occurs 11 times, once for every hour of the clock because that is, coincidentally, how many levels of unreality separate the real world ("Prime") from the Void, and the party is dropping through each of them, one by one. caruso does a good job of varying the loops--the theme of the party changes each time, different threads are followed, sometimes kem and rika leave the building and have to deal with the dangers outside, and of course, little by little they figure out what's happening and how to fight it. and throughout the whole night, kem is gradually coming to terms with how motherhood has changed her priorities and what that means for her, plus she and rika are working through a LOT of stuff.
i had a lot of fun with this! it's got a really good momentum--i read it in one sitting--and i thought the high concept stuff worked with the world-building really, really well. i wasn't surprised by any twist, which could have been boring except that caruso timed her reveals well, so there was always a solid emotional impact. much like that, kem-as-hound and rika-as-cat could have been predictable, except that both were so delightfully themselves that it works. it's written in first person from kem's pov, and anyone with both cats and dogs can tell you that watching a dog try to comprehend why a cat does anything is half the fun. my main complaint was that some of kem's language felt sort of millennial online in a way that pulled me out a bit every time. this is apparently the first book in a series, and i'm not sure if the appeal will transfer once you move past the party-dropping-through-layers-of-reality of it, but i guess time will tell. pun NOT intended.
this was The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso and i can only assume i bought it because murder is mentioned on the back. i am who i am. but this book isn't a murder mystery. don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of murders, but it does some not-time loops to keep the murders from sticking (mostly) and it's pretty clear who is doing them. the last hour between worlds follows kembral thorne, a sort of private eye/bodyguard currently on leave due to having just had a baby. she's out on her own for the first time since her daughter's birth, and is tired and wrong-footed because of it. she's at a new year's party, surrounded by socialites and city elders, and Rika Nonesuch, her maybe-rival, maybe-friend (a burglar/assassin, a Cat to kem's Hound) is there looking really hot. they didn't part on the best terms. also there? a big ol' clock. shortly, everybody dies and kem has no choice but to be on the job again.
cat, hound, and assorted other guests end up trapped in what is essentially a high-concept bottle episode. the book begins with kem already at the party, and every subsequent loop begins the same way. caruso establishes that the loop occurs 11 times, once for every hour of the clock because that is, coincidentally, how many levels of unreality separate the real world ("Prime") from the Void, and the party is dropping through each of them, one by one. caruso does a good job of varying the loops--the theme of the party changes each time, different threads are followed, sometimes kem and rika leave the building and have to deal with the dangers outside, and of course, little by little they figure out what's happening and how to fight it. and throughout the whole night, kem is gradually coming to terms with how motherhood has changed her priorities and what that means for her, plus she and rika are working through a LOT of stuff.
i had a lot of fun with this! it's got a really good momentum--i read it in one sitting--and i thought the high concept stuff worked with the world-building really, really well. i wasn't surprised by any twist, which could have been boring except that caruso timed her reveals well, so there was always a solid emotional impact. much like that, kem-as-hound and rika-as-cat could have been predictable, except that both were so delightfully themselves that it works. it's written in first person from kem's pov, and anyone with both cats and dogs can tell you that watching a dog try to comprehend why a cat does anything is half the fun. my main complaint was that some of kem's language felt sort of millennial online in a way that pulled me out a bit every time. this is apparently the first book in a series, and i'm not sure if the appeal will transfer once you move past the party-dropping-through-layers-of-reality of it, but i guess time will tell. pun NOT intended.
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Date: 2025-02-14 04:47 am (UTC)