Mirrored Heavens

[psocoptera]

Mirrored Heavens, Rebecca Roanhorse, 2024 fantasy novel, concluding her Between Earth and Sky trilogy started with Black Sun and continued in Fevered Star. I've probably said this before but it's a real struggle for me these days to read a trilogy spread out over a span of years. I didn't have time to sit down and reread the first two and so I came to this one without much of a recollection of what was happening or what I was hoping to see happen. I said about the last one that I thought Roanhorse was doing a good job balancing the intrigue plot and the epic fantasy plot, but reading this one I didn't feel particularly invested in either, and the end felt muddled and kind of anti-climactic. One of my favorite aspects of the previous books was their settings, and in theory we were spending some time in some new locations in this one, but I never got much of a sense of them. It was a fast read despite its length and had some good fantasy-action sequences, so, what more could I ask for, I guess, and I think I'll still give the series my Hugo Series vote. (With genuine enthusiasm - there is some definite Cool in these - although also out of disinterest in the other nominees. I mean, I'm definitely not voting for InCryptid, Stormlight, or whichever Tchaikovsky series that is, I read a Tasha Suri book a few years ago for the Astounding and wasn't into it enough so much as to to not want to read more of her work, although apparently that book is not part of this particular series, and I read Annihilation and decided not to read more of those, although apparently I liked it okay. Maybe I'll give those my second-place vote, hm.)