Much as this reviewer loves wandering through bookstores and adding to a TBR pile that is tall enough to block out the sun at last count, there are times when a book buyer’s fingers lead them to online sites where apart from the book you came for, a thousand different other books are offered as possible algorithmically-endorsed book to throw onto your bookcase too.
Generally, these “You might also like …” suggestions are ignored but sometimes happily they are not, which is how The Last Watch by J. S. Dewes (and its sequel The Exiled Fleet; review to be posted in due course) made its way into cart, through the vagaries of the postal system and to this reviewer’s hands where it defied the 300 other books in line before it to be read almost immediately.
To be fair, it was initially selected because a sci-fi tale of a certain length was needed for some escapist diversions after a number of very good but deeply serious reads, but after only about a page or two, or quite possibly before that, it was clear that The Last Watch is something special.
The immediate thing that grips is however quickly and yet fulsomely Dewes delivers up stunningly memorable characters and some first-rate worldbuilding that is no expertly done that with little time wasted or words expended, you get a searingly vivid idea of the galaxy in which a suitably epic story takes place.
So ultimately, it wasn’t Kharon’s Gate, or the Drudgers, or that other Sentinels, or the Legion’s mysterious disappearing act that worried her [Adequin]. It was just Griffith Bach’s fate. He rooted her to this life, and without him, she’d be lost. (P. 221)
The Last Watch wastes no time at all introducing us to Cavalon Mercer, a rebellious but intelligently thoughtful prince from the one of the corrupt and decidedly authoritarian royal houses that rigidly control what’s left of the human race, who, after bombing his much-hated grandfather’s genetics facility, has been sent off to join the Sentinels, the galactic equivalent of the Foreign Legion or Game of Thrones‘ The Night’s Watch.
In just a few paragraphs it becomes clear that while Cavalon has issues, he is at heart a decent human being who, for the egregious sin of daring to challenge the established order, and in markedly violent fashion, has been sent to the far edge of the universe millions upon million of light years from home where he is fated to keep watch, with a crew of similar cast aside soldiers, over the boundaries between the known galaxy and the dark terrors beyond what is known as the Divide.
He’s none too happy to be there, and gives Adequin Rake, the captain of the Argus, the two hundred-year old-plus dreadnaught battleship that has been far finer days, a hard time of epic proportions.
He doles out cheeky asides, outright defiance and borderline insubordination, but Adequin holds her ground, suspecting that deep inside the angry teenager-like visage lurks a man who could be a more than worthwhile addition to her crew.
She’s right but the interplay between the two is feisty and clever, further burnishing them both as characters but also making it abundantly clear that here is a writer who can bring her characters to life with a real authentic humanity and the kind of spirited personalities that you live for in good novels.
The fact that Adequin, Cavalon and others like Mesa, a Savant-like person who has alien-human origins, Griffith Bach, a hunky special forces soldier like Adequin who he has known since their Titan unit days, and Lace are so richly and intimately drawn means that all the action of The Last Watch, and there is plenty of it with the edge of the universe collapsing around them, really comes even more alive in ways that will leave you gasping at the sheer vivacity of the storytelling and the muscularity of the emotion contained within.
The Last Watch is one of those novels that manages to be both epically space operatic in scope and expanse, and yet so powerfully emotionally intimate, with the two balanced in ways that make you sigh joyously in admiration, that you are swept along on its nearly 500 pages.
Honestly, so compelling a novel is it that you scarcely notice the pages flying by so eager are you to see where the story, fuelled by humanity and the pain, regret, loss and hope that comes with it, goes.
And it goes to some very good placed indeed.
For a start, the universe begins to rapidly start racing inward, which might not be a problem a few hundred million lightyears from nowhere except that it threatens to take the thousands of Sentinels, cast aside like the rejects they are told they are, by the inner Core powers-that-be, and the entire human race with it.
That wouldn’t be a good thing at the best of times, but with Homo Sapiens down to a shrinking population courtesy of a millennia-long war with the rapaciously xenocidal Viators who have yet to meet a sentient race they don’t want to wipe from the face of existence, any further threats could well spell their doom.
She [Adequin] continued to stare down at the terminal. ‘I don’t blame myself,’ she said. ‘I blame the Legion.’
He grinned. ‘About time you joined the party.’
She smiled back. ‘ I think my invite got lost in transit.’
‘Probably. You know how well comms work out here.’
She let out a heavy breath, then stood. ‘Ready for this, Jack?’
He stood as well. ‘Ready, boss.’ (P. 436)
The sheer brilliance of The Last Watch is that it takes tried and true elements of many a space opera such as the heart-of-gold antihero and the leader who puts faith in them, a sprawling but beleaguered human race and some deadly power machinations, and make them refreshingly, spellbindingly their own.
It is unlike anything you’ve read because, right out of the gate, it knows what kind of story it is, who its characters are in ways that are so compelling that you can’t help but identify with them all, and runs with its premise with an invigorating confidence that knows when to go big and bold and when to withdraw to the silence and the pain and to simply let things be.
It is stunningly good writing, so assured and so able to prosecute on the promise of the first few pages that you will be gripped right up until the final page, in awe of how good the action-packed narrative, the memorably alive characters, the crackingly good dialogue, the intricately expansive worldbuilding, hell, EVERYTHING, is.
The Last Watch does not even come close to putting a foot wrong, although Cavalon does on his first spacewalk in ways that expose that talented though he is, he has a lot to learn (good thing Adequin is patient and a talented and intuitive leader), delivering up the sort of robustly immersive story that captures the imagination, steals the heart and keeps you on the edge of your seat, real or metaphorical, right until the end.
Thank goodness Dewes has gifted us with a sequel – two, in fact, with book three in the series coming soon – because stories this good and this involving demand to be continued, with The Last Watch proof that there is something new under the galactic suns and that perhaps sometimes heeding the algorithm isn’t so bad if it gives you storytelling this damn good.