Review – Nightwatch on the Hinterlands (The Weep, Book 1) by K. Eason (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Space Opera
Length: 411 pages
Publisher: DAW
Release Date: October 19, 2021
ASIN: B0925DJXCK
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Weep series
Source: eGalley from Netgalley
Rating: 4/5 stars
“THE TEMPLAR: When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don’t kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.
THE SPY: Officially, Gaer is an ambassador from the vakari. Unofficially, he’s also a spy, sending information back to his government, unfiltered by diplomatic channels. Unlike Iari, Gaer isn’t so sure the riev’s behavior is just a malfunction, since the riev were created using an unstable mixture of alchemy and arithmancy.
As Gaer and Iari search for the truth, they discover that the murderous riev is just a weapon in the hands of a wielder with wider ambitions than homicide–including releasing horrors not seen since the war, that make a rampaging riev seem insignificant…”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in The Weep series; right now there are two books in this series. I got an eGalley of this book through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: This is the first book in The Weep series, which is a spin-off series of The Thorne Chronicles (which I have not read). I ended up enjoying this quite a bit. This first book is a bit of an info dump and I initially struggled to sort all the sci-fi terms and races, but once I got further into the story this wasn’t an issue.
We mainly follow Lieutenant Iari who is a Templar. Now that their nation is no longer at war the Templar are assigned with protecting the peace in the town Iari lives in. Iari to called to some commotion and expects a fight or robbery but instead finds out a Riev has murdered someone. The Riev’s aren’t supposed to kill people, they are biomechanical soldiers that were decommissioned after the war. She fears that this is tied somehow to The Weep, which can cause breaches in reality.
Iari is joined by Gaer, a vakari ambassador, who is a previous enemy of Iari’s people and an arithmancer. Gaer has his own agenda but for now decides to help Iari unravel this mystery. All of the characters in this book are highly entertaining and I loved reading about them.
This is fast-paced and action packed and was hard to put down. There’s a lot to get your mind around here. There’s a whole history of alien races and their interactions, the concept of the Weep which is warping reality in spots, and the different technologies (arithmancy and other biotech). I enjoyed unraveling it all and of course there is a very well done mystery. If you strip all the sci-fi away this is basically a well done investigative mystery.
I thought this was well written and easy to read and really ended up enjoying the world, the characters, and the plot. I definitely plan on continuing the series. This was very different from a lot of other sci-fi I have read and I enjoyed it.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. If you can get based all the initial data dumping, it’s a fun story. There’s a ton of action in here, some intriguing concepts, and some cool aliens races. I really ended up having a fun time reading this and look forward to reading the second book in the series. I would recommend if you enjoy space opera with a lot of mystery and action and some fun alien races.
