Review: The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso
Blurb:
A whip-smart adventure fantasy packed with reality-bending magic, and sapphic romance, The Last Hour Between Worlds is the brilliant launch of a new series from David Gemmell Award-nominated author Melissa Caruso.
In the Deep Echoes, no one can save you.
Star investigator Kembral Thorne has a few hours away from her newborn, and she just wants to relax and enjoy the year-turning party. But when people start dropping dead, she’s got to get to work. Especially when she finds that mysterious forces are plunging the whole party down through layers of reality and into nightmare.
One layer down: It's no big deal. Stay alert, and you’ll be fine.
Two, three layers down: Natural laws are negotiable, and things get very strange.
Four layers down: There are creatures with eyes in their teeth and walls that drip blood. Most people who fall this far never return.
Luckily, Kem isn’t most people. But as cosmic powers align and the hour grows late, she’ll have to work with her awfully compelling nemesis, notorious cat burglar Rika Nonesuch, for a chance to save her city—though not her night off.
Review:
I loved Melissa's other series, the premise of this and the cover. The Last Hour Between Worlds just left me feeling....mixed.
We've got like a Groundhog Day reliving happening with an Inception layer level reality, the combination of which sounded really good to me. The first layer, reality and what is the real word is the Prime, below it are 11 echoes. I liked how each one got weirder as things went, because you'd expect it to get weirder as you move away from reality. I was also keen on the magic of blood and belief as it stabilises the world around Kembral. And with each series of people dropping dead at the new-year turning ball, we also have a 'whodunnit' to solve before the next reset and series of many deaths. This all sounded really, really good to me. So why didn't it work?
Kembral is a new mother, I had no issue with that and frankly, it was refreshing to have an older MC that was established in her career. Her role also echoed what many new mothers go through when they are damn good at their job: When are you going back to work? Are you going back to work? You're not at work right now but can I ask you about work things? Where this lost me a bit was when she would entirely reduce herself to JUST a mother, for example "I might be a nursing mom in over my head," But it's been well established that she is one of the best, with a niche skill that takes years and years to learn. Especially since she herself says things like she always gets the job done or "always brought the dog back". It just felt off that she reduced herself to such short and minimal wording. The rest of the new mother and new baby mention was fine. I don't think it was overdone since duh, she's a new, single mother finally getting a night to herself for the first time in months. Also, I have to mention the line "As if I could still have a romantic future, even as a mother." Kembral! It's a baby, not a rare and contagious disease!
There were a few things I worked out which might suggest I'm an observant reader (everyone in Ryan Cahill’s discord would wholly disagree with this) but more than likely just means Melissa drops the clues exactly where she wants us to pick them up. Despite being able to pick up those clues like a trail of M&Ms to a trap, there were still areas I didn't feel like I understood. Because everything takes place in the ballroom of this mansion as it drops echoes down, I have no idea about the guilds beyond the glimpses we see. I wish I understood the guild system more. Hounds seem to retrieve things. Cats steal??? Ravens are the knowledge guild and there's also some kind of inter-guild politics and rules that exist but I'm a bit grey on those. But the side characters, and Kembral, are constantly referred to by their guilds so these are important to the world…right? Please! Tell me more about them! Alongside that, the moon signs and waxing/waning moons are clearly of some importance to who people are and how they behave. But beyond that bit of information, I really don't know what is what. And what the heckie is a crux year? Which seems to be a mystery to some of the characters as well.
I would have liked to spend more time with some of the side characters, even if I don't understand their cloud signs or guild affiliations. Despite having a large list of named characters, most aren't that relevant, except for Rika and a bit with Pearson. They might become more relevant as the series goes? I have no idea. Rika and Kembral's relationship I struggled with. I vastly preferred them as rivals that had an almost relationship past which shadowed every interaction thereafter. I absolutely do not think we needed the background we got about their relationship and given the impact it had on the course of Kembral's life, I will continue to insist on this opinion and die on this hill. Their final interactions were a bit like 'Really?' for me, but then again I haven't spent several hours reliving the last hour and a whole bunch of deaths in questionable layers of non-reality, so what do I know?
There is so much in and around this world that I want more detail on. I'm not necessarily sure I want to spend time learning about it with Kembral and Rika as the main focuses but I want to know more about the guilds, the landscape, the politics. And hopefully if I do, I'll feel less mixed and more overall positive about it. Because I would really love to! All this said, I did not hate the book. I did not dislike the book. It took me a bit to get through because some of it didn’t wholly vibe with me the way Melissa’s other works did but so many people love it. I can completely see why, even if I’m not in that camp myself. If you think Groundhog Day meets Inception with a ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery solved by a new mother who is damn good at her job sounds good, I can’t recommend any other book.
