Nightwatch Over Windscar (K. Eason)

Nightwatch Over Windscar
The Arithmancy and Anarchy series: The Weep series, Book 2
K. Eason
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: The Brood - extradimensional entities whose very touch is death, given access to the civilized multiverse through the fissures of the Weep - were the one enemy who could unite both sides in an interstellar war, the one abomination that all sides could agree should be destroyed at all costs. Never in a million years would anyone conceive of intentionally summoning Brood... until strange attacks through B-town, on the Weep-touched hinterland world of Tanis, drew the attention of local authorities and the Aedis templar knights - devotees of a universal Elemental religion, infused with symbiotic nanotech that helps them fight Brood - stationed there. Thus, the tenju knight Iari, ex-military civilian investigator Corso, vakar ambassador (and SPERE agent, not to mention a top-notch arithmancer in his own right) Gaer, and a handful of others stumbled upon the audacious plot of a wichu separatist determined to undermine the Accords of peace and the Confederation of species. They barely survived the encounter... but their work is far from done.
With the use of a blood-soaked altar portal and devilish artificing, the wichu managed to flee B-town for the northern hinterlands of the Windscar, close to where the Weep fissure brushes the planet and far from civilization and Aedis outposts. Now a captain, Iari leads a small strike team to explore old ruins that might be the separatists' hideout - only to discover something even more dangerous than wichu artificing, a new enemy that speaks to a threat to all civilized worlds.

REVIEW: Much like the first installment, Nightwatch Over Windscar does not take time to slowly acclimate the reader and catch them up, but pretty much plunges straight into the action (with a few memory jogs along the way) and trusts the reader to keep up. It maintains the high-octane pacing, sometimes tangled threads of alliances and rivalries and politics, and relationships (which grow even more complicated), while ratcheting up the stakes.
Knight Iari is still a fairly devout templar, loyal to the Aedis, but has come to trust Ambassador Gaer - a vakar, once sworn enemies of most species (even though he is of the Five Tribes faction who defected from the greater vakari Protectorate to ally with the Confederation - a partial precursor to the devastating mistake that unleashed the Weep) - more than her own commander about some things... such as the changes her symbiotic nanotech, the syn, seems to have undergone after their close encounter with the wichu separatist. The syn seems to be able to channel bursts of great power, and may have reasserted the sentience it once possessed long generations ago. Iari still does not know what to make of this change, nor does Gaer, and the matter of pursuing the terrorists seems more pressing than parsing the peculiar intricacies of nanotech evolution at the moment. Gaer, for his part, feels his loyalties shifting in ways he never anticipated when he came to the world of Tanis as official ambassador and undercover SPERE agent for his government. He is no follower of the Elements, and still considers the symbiotic nanotech and other body modifications of the knights a form of blasphemy, but Iari has become a steadfast companion and even friend, and he finds himself pulled closer and closer into her orbit and inner circle as they encounter fresh dangers in the Windscar ruins and beyond. Fellow tenju Corso, too, becomes more entangled with the Aedis and the once-enemy vakari, as well as his former companion Iari, than he ever anticipated when they first reunited in B-town in the previous book. His native knowledge of the Windscar make him an ideal scout, though what he finds in the windswept north is far more than he bargained for. Also returning are the two riev Char and Winter Bite, largely artificial constructs built around dead soldiers predating the Weep, who have voluntarily joined the Aedis. The threat itself plays on inter- and intraspecies resentments and prejudices, where large portions of the hinterland populations of tenju have been left to their own devices beyond the southern cities and their garrisons; many grow increasingly resentful of the outworlder presence on their planet, supplanting their older ways and older beliefs and offering no tangible benefit as they are preyed upon by rogue Brood excursions. It's a deep wellspring of resentment for someone to tap - and someone seems to have indeed tapped it, in a way that might doom the greater multiverse. This time, Gaer's prodigial arithmancy skills and Iari's evolved syn may not be enough to stop an enemy neither could have imagined in their worst nightmares. The story takes some interesting twists and jags on the way to a solid climax, with a resolution that all but demands another installment... one I so far see no sign of, but which I hope is on its way some time soon (for all that I fear this one flew too far under the radar, or hit too far to the side of mainstream reading tastes, for the publisher to keep going with it).

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