RogerBW's Blog

2005 gaslamp fantasy, last of its trilogy. The Gardier are still invading; Vienne has fallen; and our heroes are a long way from home.

Really don't read this in isolation. There are lots of moving pieces in this story, and while you may be able to work out roughly what's going on you'll lose most of the emotional resonance of what these characters have been through. There are also multiple viewpoints, mostly Tremaine and Florian but with significant excursions.

There is a certain amount of plot device here (the disembodied remnant of a dead character dispenses ambiguous informatoin), but that's only to get things started.

So there's a new sort of world-gate, and some of our heroes set out to explore them in the hope of learning more about the invading Gardier. It's becoming increasingly clear that the Gardier haven't always been like this, that they changed within living memory, but how did that happen?

"We mean no harm. We wish to talk."

Tremaine found herself sort of almost willing to believe that. If you were planning a triple murder of sleeping people, she was fairly sure you didn't send Grandpa in first, especially unarmed.

Meanwhile there are politics and shenanigans back aboard the Queen Ravenna: this potential ally is really powerful, but can he be trusted? (If your answer is "obviously not, we've met him before", well, you're going to be a problem to the people who want to use him, and they have political pull.)

"Join the Rienish navy," the woman sailor remarked, watching this process with distaste. "See unusual sights. Never sleep with the lights out again."

"This is nothing," the officer told the woman wryly, holding the bag out at arm's length. "You should have seen the man-thing with the crystals all over it. They're still finding bits of him."

But the plot isn't even the meat of the story; this is about the people more than anything else, both on a small scale (trying to dissolve a hasty marriage before it hurts the people involved) and on a large (considering the ethics of slaughtering an enemy who've been comprensively lied to to get them onto the battlefield in the first place)

"If you raise a daughter to be both independent and an excellent marksman, you have to accept the fact that your control over her actions is at an end."

As usual with Wells, it's a wordy book; but they're good words. A fine conclusion to the trilogy.