From bestselling and award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull comes A Ruin, Great and Free, the stunning conclusion to the popular Convergence Saga.
It has been nearly two years since the anti-monster riots. The inhabitants of Moon have been very fortunate in the intervening months. Inside their hidden monster settlement, they’ve found peace, even as the world outside slips into increasing unrest. Monsters are being hunted everywhere, forced back into the shadows they once tried to escape from. Other secret settlements have offered a place to hide, but how long can this half-measure against fear and hatred last?
Over the course of three days, the inhabitants of Moon are tested. The Black Hand continues to search for them and the Cult of the Zsouvox wants to make Moon the last stand in their war against the Order of Asha. This is more than enough to reckon with, but the gods have also placed their sights on Moon—and they bring with them a conflict that may either save or unravel the universe itself.

My Review:

First, this was wow. And second, and third, and as it turns out, fourth. Not always a cohesive wow, but a wow all the same.

It’s also the conclusion to an epic whose whole is DEFINITELY greater than the sum of its parts. But you really need the parts – and if it’s been awhile a refresher on the parts, No Gods, No Monsters and We Are the Crisis – to help you make this ‘fracture’ of the multiverse cohere into something like a single story.

Because the story is considerably larger than the page count of the books would suggest.

From some perspectives – and there are plenty to choose from – this is a story about otherness and equality and justice and activism to bring about the last three for the first. While it uses literal monsters, werewolves and vampires and invisible people and magic users, as metaphors for otherness, it does not shy away from equating ‘being a monster’ with being ‘other’ on any axis that we already use to separate people, including but absolutely not limited to race, gender or gender representation, sexual preference or the lack thereof, socioeconomic class, immigration status, ethnicity, etc., etc., and truly ad nauseum.

Humans seem to actively search for axes on which they can divide themselves (all sharp puns equally intended) so they can class ‘others’ by any definition as ‘less than.’ So that their own group can be ‘more than.’ You might think that’s a digression but it’s NOT. The exploitation of this phenomenon is the heart of the story.

At least one of the hearts. It’s a monster, it has more than one.

At the same time – and very much the man, wizard, god, whatever behind the curtain – this is a story at the intersection of “God created mankind in his own image,” the reverse, which is that humanity creates gods in its own image, and the Yiddish proverb that goes, “Man plans and God laughs.”

Because this is where the story comes together in the literal sense, as the one and many deus ex machina (dei ex machina?) who have been maneuvering humanity and its monsters and monstrousness from behind the scenes on all the worlds of the multiverse. (We’re only closely observing two and it’s plenty to get the flavor of the mess they’re dealing with.)

If humanity creates gods in its own image, whether to explore the world, explain the world, excuse the way the world works or cope with the things it doesn’t understand, what would a god do with those same questions?

It might, and in this case it did, create gods and god-like beings in its own image to allow it to observe its world from a perspective outside its own. But the beings it creates would also be gods. Who would also want to create, cope with, and control, their own worlds and circumstances and destinies.

With humanity caught in the crossfire. And that is the other heart of this story, that conflict of purpose and explanation between gods. It’s not a conflict between good and evil per se, but a conflict between gods who believe that the universe that created them is a fascinating thing to explore, control and contain as much as they can, vs those that believe that the universe they can’t control is an enemy that must be destroyed.

The story in this concluding book in the trilogy reveals that all the sides of what could be a terrible equation have been manipulated by gods, the agents of the Cult of the Zsouvox who have created both the monsters in the human population and the movement that has demonized them in order to sow chaos and bring about destruction, while the smaller, quieter, Order of Asha opposes the Cult, moving their human agents as more-or-less willing pawns on their giant chessboard, trying to bring about a possibility that the universe, the Order, humanity, and the gods themselves, all survive. Together.

It’s a slim chance, but it’s the only one they’ve got.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up for the purpose of listening to it. I could listen to Dion Graham read the worst book in the universe. An old phone book. All the grocery lists. Anything. There were points where I got so caught up in the voice that I was mesmerized – a definite danger as I listen while driving.

There are a LOT of threads to, not exactly unravel because things have already thoroughly unraveled, but ‘ravel’ in this concluding book. The two worlds that we are invested in – or rather we’re invested in the characters (AND WE ARE!) on two different versions of Earth are in the midst of trauma after trauma, and the pace hasn’t let up ever.

In the world most like ours, the Earth of No Gods, No Monsters – even though we now know there are PLENTY of both – the monsters who survived their “Boston Massacre” have found a slice of peace in a remote, intentional, sanctuary community supported by the Order of Asha. A sanctuary that is about to be breached by the Black Hand agents of the Cult of the Zsouvox. Their story is wrapped around questions of standing to defend what they’ve built or escaping to hide in yet another protected shadow in the hopes that they can outrun or outlive the Cult. A decision that is made for them by the Order of Asha informing them that they either stand here or lose the whole multiverse.

(This side of the story, about the risks, rewards and costs of constant activism no matter the cause, has a surprising readalike in We Will Rise Again with its collection of stories and essays that reckon with activism through both fiction and nonfiction, because damn but this is a fictional tour-de-force of the same told in a fascinating, multi-threaded story over multiple times and places and corners of the multiverse.)

The story in another corner of the multiverse, twenty-five years after their “Massacre of Men” by invading aliens aligned with the Cult of the Zsouvox whether they know it or not (honestly I’m not sure) is focused on the manipulators of their own world who see the crisis coming but are trying to fend it off in ways that more or less align with the Order of Asha. (This side of the story is directly related to the author’s first book, The Lesson. While I had enough to empathize with the characters and their dilemma from We Are the Crisis, I wasn’t quite as invested because I didn’t have enough background.)

All of that being said, this book, this series, is a lot. It’s beyond compelling because of the way that it’s using fantasy and science fiction to tell a story that’s really, paraphrasing the original, about human’s inhumanity to other humans. Because the real monsters are just us. The story does make me wonder if we can save ourselves without the intervention of one – or more – deus ex machina who can see us for what we are – because humans as a species have clearly got some problems with that.

By putting the story – just as the gods in this story put their own questions – into a scenario outside ourselves, it does what SF does when it’s at the top of its game. It holds up a mirror to society as it is to show both what is and what could be. And that’s what I’m taking away from this read.

However, I’m really glad that I have copies of all three books and audiobooks for this one. Because the way that the end turns itself around and explains or at least informs every single thing that has happened from the very beginning means that this fascinating and fantastic trilogy is going to be even better – and become a more cohesive and comprehensive story – on a second read/listen. Right after I read and/or listen to the author’s first book, The Lesson, now that I know it’s just a bit of a prequel – in other words, this Convergence Saga converges with that universe. I’m looking forward to starting over – at the beginning of the beginning – to see where it all leads now that I think I know all the players. That I’ll probably discover that I don’t is absolutely part of my fascination with this entire saga.