K.J. Charles's Reviews > The Last Hour Between Worlds

I really liked the idea behind this. It's a sort of Inception where the characters at a party keep going to deeper, stranger levels of unreality (Echoes), living through the same hour or so in different ways, while trying to prevent the bad guys from doing the bad thing. Along with this there's a low key but very enjoyable sapphic romance.

It didn't work so well in the execution for me. I'd have liked the Echoes to be more distinct, and to be used more. A lot of them we didn't even see because we were repeatedly in the same party environment. (Anyone who dies is restored at the next level down because it's not real till the end, which inevitably lowered the interim stakes considerably.) I really liked the heroines, and indeed having a nursing mother do the kickass things, and a lot of the ideas are terrific and ingenious; I just felt it needed more movement and propulsion to live up to itself. On the other hand, you might say that given the premise, the repetition and limitation of the setting are literally the point of the exercise, and I wouldn't argue. YMMV, I think.