Spoilers Ahead!

This is a highly entertaining fantasy epic.  The world had evolved into two classes:  large merchant houses/clans who had all the power; and the poor people who, as they usually do, just exist on the fringes.  But our protagonists had found a way to share the power with everyone.  They really believed they’d be able to remake their society into something more just and fair.  It was really a case of “too little, too late”.

Their technology is driven by the art of scriving.  This is the art of rewriting what is real to convince an object to behave differently that it should.  For example, a sword could be convinced that gravity is greater than normal and the direction of the gravitic mass is not necessarily down.  Which means, that scrived sword would cut through someone with unnatural speed and force as the sword obeys the law of gravity.  This is done by using a special language and engraving “instructions” onto the object; and only by specialists called hypatus.  It’s one of the best MacGuffins I’ve seen.

Sancia and Berenice have lost the home they made in Foundryside.  They tried to defeat both Crasedes and Valeria but failed; instead, they inadvertently created an entirely new entity when Gregor tried to control Valeria.  When Gregor was “absorbed” into Valeria (or vice versa), they became an entity which named itself Tevanne, for the city in which it was born.  Tevanne’s first effort was to destroy the entire city in a bid to also destroy Crasedes.  In a last-ditch effort to save as many people as possible from the conflagration, Sancia, Berenice and Clef led an armada out to sea as Orso spent his last moments buying them time as he destroyed the harbor.

Many years later, we find Sancia and Berenice shepherding a new nation dubbed Giva; made up of all the peoples they were able to rescue as Tevanne continued to turn the planet to rubble in an effort to find and destroy Crasedes. Clef has been twinned to a ship which allows him the ability to communicate with whomever is touching the ship.  If it weren’t for Clef’s literally becoming a ship, they might not have escaped so many of Tevanne’s incursions.

Berenice’s innovations in the art of scriving has led her people down an amazing path: scriving people.  Their innovation of twinning, which allows two things to believe they are the same, has been applied to people with surprising results.  Sancia and Berenice are twinned which gives them unparalleled closeness and deepens their love; but for others, it allows many people to draw so close to one another as to be a group mind.  This will change everything.

At one point, Clef has access to a thought or memory from Tevanne that explains its goal:  it intends to “turn off” the world and restart it.  Gregor’s and Valeria’s pain is still part of what it is, and it thinks that by restarting the world, the pain would not have existed. As Tevanne rampages across the land destroying whole cultures and cities, they have to find a solution to stopping it.  They also discover that Tevanne believes Crasedes has the final piece that is needed to stop everything.  This puts our intrepid little group in the unenviable position of having to actually save Crasedes; whom they would gladly destroy if they could.

Along the way, Clef experiences more than expected as he “inhabits” different objects to help in the war; leading to him recovering more memories of his time as a man.  These memories eventually give him the whole story of why he and Crasedes seem to be linked somehow; memories that he both cherishes and abhors.  He also learns just what or who Valeria was although she is essentially lost inside the entity Tevanne.  These revelations are used by the author in lieu of exposition; which I heartily approve of.  It gives much needed background for this ‘verse in a very exciting and suspenseful way.

There was, of course, an epic battle and a typical sacrifice needed to save the world.  It was pretty awesome.  And it changed everything forever for our heroes Sancia, Berenice and even Gregor, in the end.  Clef and Crasedes finally remember everything that brought them…and the whole world…to this end.  And, as it began, so they ended their story.  The closing scene was quite poignant and yet satisfying; almost a happy-ever-after, the closest any of them could come to it.

The characters were wonderful; so many of them interacting in so many ways.  The plot was very involved and although it seemed convoluted and complicated, it really wasn’t.  Once everything was revealed it was a pretty simple solution, after all.  Using scriving as the MacGuffin, really tied the whole story together with a conclusion that felt like we (the readers) actually got somewhere.  I enjoyed the ride.  Don’t try to start anywhere but on book one; you need the background and the slow build to understand the point of the story.  I tried to find a way to describe it without using a cliché but there are two now that have found their way into our vocabulary that just about everyone recognizes:  “with great power, comes great responsibility” and “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.  Finito. ~~  Catherine Book

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