A Groundhog Day, a Baby, And an Eldritch Horror: Short Review of The Last Hour Between Worlds
Should I read this: Probably, but there might be a couple ways in which the marketing might promise something the book really isn’t.
Bookshop.org link (not an affiliate link): The Last Hour Between Worlds a book by Melissa Caruso
Author’s Website: Melissa Caruso.net
I am a sucker for time loop stories. Ground Hog Day is perhaps my favorite movie. All You Need is Kill is one of the few manga I have ever read. I love Edge of Tomorrow and not just for all the inventive ways they off Tom Cruise. I thought I was getting that kind of story when I picked this off the recommendations I had been given. Unfortunately, it really isn’t that kind of book. Fortunately, it is well written and a fun adventure with an unexpected, if welcome, understanding of new parenthood.
The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso is a fun book about saving the world from eldritch horrors while being annoyed by your ex-girlfriend and really, really, really tired because you have a new baby at home. That last, honestly, is what elevated the book for me. When we had our first, we were exhausted all the time, and yet still expected to function as full adults. I was so tired at one point after being up for almost two days straight because the baby wasn’t sleeping, I fainted. When I went to work the next day with a black eye and cut nose, no one suggested I go home to get some rest. Parenthood is exhausting and I really liked that this book made that a central conceit for the main character.
The book cover and marketing, to me, promised a time loop story. And while a time loop is kind of present, it is not really driving the story. The setting is a world where people can access what are called Echos — kinds of alternate realities that are stacked one on top of each other and which diverge more from “reality” as you go down. The plot MacGuffin is that the Big Bads of the Echos are slaughtering a group of powerful people at a New Year’s party in order to control the world through weird magic. Each time the time loop repeats, the party “drops” to a lower level of Echo and things get weirder and more dangerous.
This also might qualify as what is called today “romantasy”. I am not sure, though, because I don’t read romance. I believe that romantasy is meant to be where the romance is the focus of the book, and the setting just happens to be fantasy in some form or fashion. In this book, however, I don’t think the setting is meant to be the backdrop for the romance. And while the romance is central to the story, it is central because it helps resolve the main plot. Again, that might be common in romantasy, but if so, that feels like a bit like marketing hype as romances have solved the main plot since Grog carved stories on the cave wall.
Regardless of genre questions, the book really is about how to navigate your personal responsibilities with your responsibilities to the larger world, with a bit of beware of the temptations of power thrown in. Not all of us are going to have to fight eldritch monsters from weird, alternate realities (but, hey, some of us do have to work with the people in marketing — rimshot!), but we all have to balance our responsibilities to ourselves, our loved ones, and the people we work for and with. Even if most of our bosses don’t want to warp reality to serve their egos. Most.
I enjoyed the book and would recommend it unless you are really hoping for a time loop story. In that case, there are probably more appropriate titles for that particular itch. It is a fun, well written action adventure that doesn’t forget its characters live in a world with crying babies that will not fucking go to sleep and bosses that expect you to come back to work a month after giving birth. That might make it the most realistic fantasy I have ever read, and one of the most fun.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers! I hope you get to spend it with people you care about.