While still an immensely enjoyable and well-written (as always) read, I found this one a tad lackluster after the beautifully braided storylines of the first installment ("Bannerless"). Still very much looking forward to the third!

If you haven't picked this series up yet, what are you waiting for?! You're in for a treat. :) ( )

Holy cow, it's a sequel to Bannerless, be still my heart.

We rejoin Enid on a new adventure, a year or 2 further on. She continues to be a compelling character, now apparently doomed to be the investigator that specializes in murder. I think this is becoming a post apocalyptic mystery series, and that makes my heart sing. This installment features Enid once again encountering the people in the Wild and once again thinking compassionately in her investigation even as she remains strict in judgment -- that in itself is part of the important lessons of these books. While there is kindness to the community, judgment on individual selfishness that does not take the bigger picture into account is not something this world is forgiving about.

I hope there are many more to come after this.

Advanced reader's copy provided by Edelweiss. ( )

Again, horribly mistreated by its marketing team. This is a hopeful post-apocalyptic UTOPIA. Where the main character calmly and methodically solves a (not that gruesome) murder against a backdrop of domestic life and family in a new civilization.
It's great, just my thing ( )

speculative fiction, mystery, post-apocalypse, population control ( )

No spoilers!

But this is a better kind of mystery novel.

One that's simultaneously post-apocalyptic SF and a hopeful social experiment and a thoughtful quest to *understand* in the middle of an ongoing pastoral murder investigation.

Wait! Isn't this what happened in the previous novel? Well, sure, somewhat, but no two murders or struggling communities are the same. The world-building here is pretty cool. So much has been lost, but solar cars and sophisticated birth control is a sign of the kind of social setup that's left to these frontier settlers. To have a banner is to be allowed to procreate. To have enough to live on is more so much more important than to hoard or amass anything at all.

And below that is the fear. The fear that they might herald in another Fall.

But it's not all dark. This is some of the most hopeful post-apocalypse novels I've read and the good mashup with deep murder investigations reminds me more of The Name of the Rose than anything else.

This particular novel introduces us to the people on the outside of these hopeful Banner communities, and I was particularly fascinated by the interplay and the lies and the reveals on both sides.

I think I may have enjoyed this one better than the first, too! :) Well worth checking out!



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