Kembral Thorne never imagined that a turn of the new year party, her first outing since childbirth, would throw her back into the action she had been desperately trying to avoid. A member of the Guild of Hounds, Kembral’s job is to leave the prime reality and enter echoes, layers of reality beneath our own, to rescue those unluckily enough to fall through. Just as the clock strikes nine Kembral bears witness to a poisoning that leaves most of the party guests dead, but before she has time to comprehend the murders she and everyone at the manor enter an echo, one plane of reality beneath their own. Everyone is alive and well, but unable to tell they are in an echo, all except Kembral. The only other privy to this sinister shift is Rika Nonesuch, notorious thief, and master illusionist, Kembral’s rival and greatest mistake. Rika’s skills are undeniable, and together they piece that an echo relic is to blame for sending them down from the prime reality, the grandfather clock ringing out the hour. The first echo is only the beginning. At the end of each hour, a horrific murder takes place by strange figures just before they are sent down into the next plane of reality, and time resets. Growing ever enlightened to their strange circumstances, Kembral and Rika will risk everything, even their uncertain future together, to unmask the real players and reset their world before their violent reality turns permanent.
A turn of the New Year party brings on the intrigue and mystery in The Last Hour Between Worlds – a startlingly layered series debut that disentangles a campy, sinister locked room murder mystery spanning twelve different layers of reality. Featuring a postpartum agent on leave trying to stop the murders and a sapphic cat-and-mouse game between two rivals who team up to solve the case, Caruso’s latest is an ambitious cocktail with ever-changing flavors, all of which remained entrenched in my memory long after I finished reading. Caruso plunges her characters into alternate realities that grow more and more bizarre, as she untangles her complicated web of humans, echoes, and empyreans playing a dangerous game to decide the fate of the upcoming year. With twelve new realities to wade through before the game is up, The Last Hours Between Worlds introduces a new kind of fantasy mystery that completely rewrites the possibilities of its genres and the types of protagonists featured at their center.
Wading into Melissa Caruso’s fantasy murder mystery set over twelve warped realities folding into alignment was as mind-bending as these phantasmagorical realities themselves. Set on the eve of The Crux Year, the party brought into focus could not be more unusual, apparent by the bloodshed commencing on the prime reality and dragging down beneath the echoes. As different planes of reality converge whoever makes a kill on that reality binds it to the one preceding, and the person with the most blood spilled at the twelfth and final layer of reality can dictate the outcome of the new year. Kembral Thorne, mother and fierce member of the Guild of Hounds steps into the role of unmasking the true players of the game, from the iridescent beetles swarming the house, to the mysterious masked attendants, and a horned being of pure chaos who shows up to doll out violence according to birth moon. Not all players are inhuman, from the corrupt politician directly responsible for kidnapping Echoborne children, to his spirited adversary, or the host of the evening who willingly brought the echo relic into her home – the clock driving them ever deeper into the echo planes. Superimposing a series of ever-bending realities, Caruso manages to unveil her true purpose as her characters encounter increasing violence and investigate the corruption at the heart of their evening and the motivations of all.
The Last Hour Between Worlds is a revelation in so many different ways, but largely in its central protagonist Kembral – a new mom encountering the challenge of balancing her role in motherhood and her career within the Guild of Hounds. Both are fulfilling in their own unique way but marrying the two seems impossible. Her current situation seems to prove that all the more. As she struggles to balance her diverging worlds Kembral is quite literally thrust down into ever bizarre imitations of her world where she steps back into her former shoes and learns just how she can find harmony. Like layers of a cake all with astonishingly different flavors, the echoes shift – one entangling the house in jungle vines, another an insipid rot, to a lake of blood running throughout the house lapping at our characters’ heels. Caruso attaches these layers to her mystery and everything revealed within the repeat of a single hour. Staving off reaching the twelfth and final layer, Kembral uses her talents as a Hound to untangle the truth connected to the heart of the Crux Year and the relationship with her rival Rika. The reveals to the motivations of our cast and to the true players of the game were completely illuminating, as humanity becomes a playing field and our characters puppets for the machinations of empyreans and the echo beings beneath the prime reality.
Melissa Caruso has left me completely stupefied by this inventive series debut. Playing on the traditions of Agatha Christie and the investigative duo, but integrating concepts of the multiverse and centering queer characters, Caruso puts her own stamp on the classic whodunit and the fantasy mystery crossover. Impressive in its magnitude, The Last Hour Between Worlds is a groundbreaking beginning emboldened by what is sure to be a boundary-spanning series. I’m so impressed by the twists that didn’t lose their punch and how deeply layered this managed to be. I was put through all the emotions from start to finish and though I can’t easily encapsulate the full experience of reading The Last Hour Between Worlds, it is truly brilliant and deserves to be read by everyone this November and beyond.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger warnings: blood, murder, death
