Melissa Caruso throws readers in the deep end with the start of her new Echo Archives series The Last Hour Between Worlds. Protagonist Kembra Thorne is having her first night away from her newborn daughter Emmi by attending a new years ball. But very soon things start to go horribly wrong, and then weird, and Kembra finds herself playing in a game in which she does not know the rules but in which wrong moves can prove deadly.
In Kembra Thorne’s world there are 11 alternate layers of reality known as Echoes. The deeper the Echo, the more dangerous. Kembra’s job as a Hound, before going on maternity leave, was to go into the Echoes to rescue people and objects. Now Kembra finds the whole ballroom and all the people in it is dropping through the layers of Echo as part of a competition between mercurial beings. Each time the ballroom goes down a layer everything resets, Groundhog Day style, although with a different theme, but at first only Kembra is aware of this.
There is a lot of lore in The Last Hour Between Worlds but Caruso effortlessly, builds reader knowledge through character interactions and plot. In some ways, Kembra is learning as she goes as well, which helps readers get up to speed. The weirdness of the Echo worlds allows Caruso to let her Lovecraft-inspired imagination run riot, with plenty of eyes, tentacles and blood to go round.
There is also a romance element worked in. One of those exasperating friends to enemies to more than friends(?) relationships full of long held grudges and misunderstandings. It does serve the anchor an emotional throughline for the book but is fairly predictable in its beats. More interesting is Caruso centring the book around a new mother, struggling to come to terms with her new status, her devotion to her child and her desire to keep working.
All in all, The Last Hour Between Worlds is a lot of page-turning fun full of cliffhangers, twists and reveals. Caruso uses a literal ticking clock thriller structure, builds a Groundhog Day style scenario into it and uses that tension to explore her magic systems and characters. And while some issues are resolved, there is plenty to explore in future volumes of the Echo Archives series.
The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso
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