Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

August 16, 2021
A murder launches a wild chase in Eason’s disorienting space opera, a return to the universe of her Thorne Chronicles series. Lieutenant Iari and Ambassador Gaer i’vakat’i Tarsik arrive at a bloody scene in B-Town, where an artificer, Pinjat, has been butchered. Pinjat’s cousin claims to have seen a riev escape the area after slaughtering Pinjat—an impossible scenario because riev, beings created from corpses and metal, are nonsentient and incapable of causing harm. Iari and Gaer report to Knight-Marshal Tobin, who entrusts them to find whoever must be reprogramming riev to kill civilians. Over the course of the investigation, Iari realizes that the riev are beginning to gain consciousness. Worse, she and Gaer learn that someone may have awoken Oversight, a communication network that connects all riev, and is likely planning to hack into it, enabling control of all riev at once. It’s up to Iari and Gaer to find this mastermind before they can activate a lethal army. The relationships are strong and the action scenes pack a punch, but keeping up with the onslaught of invented terminology and futuristic expletives (“oh, voidspit”) proves exhausting. Though billed as a standalone, the half-baked worldbuilding assumes a level of familiarity with this universe. Eason’s diehard fans are the best fit for this. Agent: Lisa Rodgers, JABberwocky Literary.

October 15, 2021
If How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge (2020) reads as space-station horror � la Alien and its predecessor as a fairy tale, then Eason's third foray into the Rory Thorne universe, though a stand-alone, works like a buddy-cop mystery. The unlikely duo in this case is Lieutenant Iari--a tall, tough tenju with tusks--and her charge, Gaer, a curious and loquacious vakari ambassador who endures xenophobia and is skilled at arithmancy. When the two stumble across a crime scene, they soon discover that the perpetrator is a riev, beings of secondary status made from corpses and machinery. The problem is that riev, no longer on the frontlines of war, aren't programmed to kill. Did a riev commit murder independently? Was it hacked? Or is this crime part of a larger conspiracy? Iari and Gaer decide to find out, and in the process, they befriend Char, a likable, nonbinary riev who takes steps towards autonomy. Readers seeking a genre-blending tale will enjoy Eason's no-nonsense tone as she sets the plot of a thriller within her established world of science fiction and fantasy.

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An unlikely duo searches for the culprit behind a gruesome murder in Eason's new series set in her Arithmancy and Anarchy universe. Years have passed since the events of How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge (2021), and the war between the colonizing forces of the vakari Protectorate and, well, everyone else is long over. Vakari who were opposed to the Protectorate eventually broke away, starting a civil war, and that war came to an end when the Protectorate accidentally ripped a hole in reality itself. This rip, the Weep, supplied surges of horrifying monsters, the Brood, and hasty alliances were made by all factions in order to deal with the new threat. Iari is a tenju "templar," meaning a member of a sort of religious military force called the Aedis. She's been assigned to escort Gaer, an ambassador (and spy) from the faction of vakari that defected from the Protectorate, as he researches the effects of the Weep on the planet Tanis. Gaer is an expert in arithmancy, the SF magic system introduced in Eason's previous books. So when a wichu arithmancer is found brutally murdered, Gaer is in a unique position to help Iari investigate. And Iari will need his friendship, as well as his protection, when her virtue and sense of justice lead her to pursue the murderer at all costs. Other than building on the setup from How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge and using the system of arithmancy, this new series doesn't seem interested in the charming narrative style or clever use of fairy-tale tropes that made Eason's debut novel, How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, such a standout. While that is a shame, Iari and Gaer's dynamic is engaging, and the shaky alliances amid a magical disaster provide a lot of interesting political tension perfect for complementing Eason's excellent action sequences. A promising start even if the new series lacks the sparkle of the old one.

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