The Last Hour Between Worlds

• Author: Melissa Caruso
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: November 19, 2024
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: The Echo Archives #1

Thank you to Orbit and Oliver Wehner for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fall headfirst into a brilliant new fantasy adventure full of mind-bending magic and sapphic romance.

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.

I was thrilled to get my hands on a copy of this. I really loved the Rooks and Ruin series, so I dove into the story as soon as I possibly could. Some of my favorite aspects of her writing in those books was present in these, and it made me so happy.

The very first thing that I noticed was Kembral’s quirky sense of humor, and it kept me entertained throughout everything that went on in the book. I’m glad it made an appearance so early, because between Kembral’s personality and sense of humor, I was more willing to wait for the plot to catch up. Kembral is a new single mother of a newborn, and this is the first time she’s been able to get out of the house without her baby, and she’s been looking forward to the end of the year party despite being out on leave. Hey, a woman can’t survive on baby talk alone.

Just as you’d expect from a series starter, a new mom can’t get a night to herself out of the house without massive fiascos occurring. And at first, it seems like the fiasco that she can’t pass by a few of her coworkers without them asking when she’s coming back to work, or worse, asking her to take on some work and completely ignoring the fact that she’s on leave. To make matters worse, she isn’t getting more than a couple of hours of sleep a night, and on this much sleep deprivation, she doesn’t fully trust her senses. So when people start dropping dead, and she’s the only one unaffected, she isn’t really sure whether it’s real or just her brain shorting because of its lack of sleep.

It’s hard for me not to get attached to characters like Kembral—she’s smart, hilarious, just the proper amount of irreverent (at a work party, at least), and most endearingly, she’s incredibly dedicated to the people that she cares about. We see this when she drops everything on her relaxing night out with other adults, and finds herself jumping into action regardless of her planned activities. 

The idea of dropping through layers of reality was a bit difficult for me to grasp, at least at first. It was explained really well, with Echoes underlying the Prime layer of the world, and each Echo underneath it getting progressively weirder. Caruso’s world building is absolutely bananas—the amount of creativity in this book blew me away. We get to explore different Echoes with someone who is very familiar with them as a Hound, or someone who tracks Echoes and retrieves them. The opposing are the Cats, who are chosen for their stealth. I loved the way these two positions are like frenemies, in that there’s a rivalry between them yet they’re sometimes pushed to work together.

Rika is a nice foil to Kembral. Despite being her nemesis, they actually work well together. I loved watching their interactions, and I strongly suspected that they had a history together from how they acted and spoke to each other. 

Overall, this book had a little of everything I liked. There’s mystery, action, fantasy with alternate layers of reality, fantastic world-building, fabulous and unforgettable characters, a little bit of queer romance, a sinister plot, and a sarcastic mom who just wants to act like a regular grown-up for the first time in a while at the turn of a new year. Caruso neatly sidesteps the pitfall associated with a time-loop or alternate universe story by ensuring that each scenario is mainly similar with small changes between levels. This is an exciting start for a new series, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for future books.

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