How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge (K. Eason)

How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge
The Thorne Chronicles, Book 2
K. Eason
DAW
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Rory Thorne was born a princess, complete with fairy gifts (and the obligatory curse), but - after stopping a plot to usurp the throne of the Free Worlds of Tadesh, inadvertently inciting a rebellion, and fleeing to the newly-formed Consortium of liberated planets - she's hung up her crown, literal and otherwise. Along with her former royal bodyguards Zhang and Thorsdottir and Jaed Moss, once heir to a tyrant, they ply the fringes of space as privateers, deliberately avoiding politics (as well as the Tadeshi royalists, who would still love nothing more than Rory's head on a platter). But the multiverse has ways of reminding people who they really are, even when they're trying everything to avoid it. Her ship, the Vagabond, has just stumbled upon a derelict, a Tadeshi ship destroyed by weaponry the likes of which they've never seen... and carrying a revolutionary weapon that could destroy any biosphere it touches. But someone else wants very much to reclaim the weapon, the Protectorate of the warlike vakari - and, in an interesting wrinkle, the weapon itself has developed sapience and wants nothing to do with the utter destruction it was created to spread. As (former) Vizier Rupert and security expert Grytt race to intervene, Rory and her companions find themselves in an impossible situation. This time, there may be no fairy tale happy ending for the princess in distress...

REVIEW: After hearing the first installment of this (possible) duology on audiobook, an interesting mash-up of fairy tale tropes and space opera with more than a dash of humor in the narrative, I resorted to buying hard copies when I couldn't get the second installment through Overdrive in a timely fashion. Fortunately, it lives up to the high bar set by the previous book. Rory's efforts to avoid further responsibilities are rudley interrupted by the discovery of this new plot by the Tadeshi royalists, one that poses a threat to all inhabited worlds... but the greater threat may be the Protectorate, whose innate arithmantic abilities make the best human and known xeno masters look like preschoolers just learning their numbers. Even the Protectorate's current enemies, two species who are just reaching out to human space as the Protectorate's theological driven Expansion wars increase pressure on their borders, are light years (literally) beyond the best local magical technology, not even needing cumbersome tesser-hex gates to travel between star systems. The presence of Rose, the bioweapon that has no desire to harm, further drives home the fact that, whatever the outcome of Rory's encounter here, the multiverse as she and her friends (and even her enemies) know it is effectively as over as the world of precolonial natives staring down their first gunpowder weapon.
With these bombshells dropped on them, they nevertheless must rise to the occasion, if only to stave off the greater, coming conflict for a time and buy a little breathing room. While Rupert and Grytt try to thread the tricky diplomatic path between two potential ally factions with little love lost for each other, Rory and her crew wind up in the belly of the beast itself when a Protectorate ship arrives, first contact of a most hostile nature. They each bring their own attitudes and expectations into the encounter, the latter often dashing uselessly against the cliffs of a dark new reality, but must trust themselves and each other to find a way to survive. By the end, relationships and outlooks have shifted dramatically, as has the greater political landscape of the many worlds, and hard choices lead to hard sacrifices.
This being presented as a historical narrative written by an unnamed chronicler, hints are dropped about what comes next, enough that I suspect a third book in the works (even though I was under the impression that this was a duology), but - like the first installment - enough wraps up here to leave the reader satisfied. All in all, I greatly enjoyed this second adventure with Rory Thorne and her companions.

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