I read this courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. It’s out in a week! (Mid-June 2024.)

My first Tim Pratt novel! And yes, I can see why he’s so popular. This novel is a wild ride.

There are two points of view in the novel, which start off separate and then – inevitably – become intertwined. The first is Glenn, whose story begins with the sentence “This is how I found out my girlfriend is a champion of Nigh-Space.” Glenn is having a perfectly normal life when he hooks up with Vivian – Vivy – and finds himself falling in love, getting matching tattoos, and having the best kinky sex of his life; the dom/sub relationship is, he points out, important for understanding how they interact over the rest of the epic tale he’s telling. Which involves learning that there are multiple planes of existence, there are groups who would like to extend their control over as many as possible, and that Vivy works for one of the groups attempting to just let planets get on with being themselves, rather than ruthlessly colonised.

The second is Tamsin, who gets home one day to a weird business card stuck in her door, and then finds out that her grandmother has been murdered. With no other family around, Tamsin is responsible for dealing with the estate; when she gets to her grandmother’s house, things go very peculiar, to the point where she learns – from her embarrassing ex-boyfriend no less – that she is not actually from Earth but from a planet on an adjoining plane, and there are people who would like to use the door that allows such travel thankyouverymuch. She herself goes through the door, back to her original home, where her family – originally one of the ruling families on their planet – had been eliminated when she was a baby. You might be able to guess where it goes from here.

Eventually the two stories coincide, there are some battles and a fair bit of sneaking, a snarky spaceship compelled to wear a human suit for a while, trust issues are revealed and discussed, people’s true natures are revealed, and so on.

This book is a lot of fun. I had been very worried that this would turn out to be the start of a series – it so easily could be! There are so many planets and potential enemies! – but no, it’s a standalone, and while I think it did wrap up a bit quickly, it was also quite a satisfying conclusion. All in all, definitely worth reading.