The Storm Beneath a Midnight Sun

The Storm Beneath the Sun is more likable and less ambitious than the first book in the series, and much of the charm is taken off, along with the flaws.

The story focuses on three main characters, with occasional chapters from other points of view. Kari is a royal sorcerer, a specialist in biothamautury who joins an archeological dig bent on uncovering and harnessing the power of a dead god. Elka is an addict trying to get clean, moving to an offshore island and working in a fish processing plant while haunted by her past. Solvi is Elka’s 10 year-old son, an artist and fabulist who wants to protect his mother.

The plots intersect around an ancient plan by a vanished pre-human civilization to birth something monstrous out of the moon. Kari realizes that the royal officials running the dig have secret ambitions that mean disaster, and defects to a terrorist group. Elka is brought into the Church of the Deep, a unique insular religion that is a front for the same ancient plan. And Solvi is the only person who seems to care that the Church of the Deep is a murderous fish cult and must be stopped.

There are some moments that really work. Kari is a survivor of Saemunder’s fungal attack against the university, and only survived by fusing his mouth and nose shut with magic. He’s restored a semblance of his old face, but it’s a poor mask over a mutating monstrosity. Ingi is an ambassador from the beings behind the plot, a brain in a mechanical box, who is delightfully untrustworthy. The battle scenes are great, and Solvi has both real trauma and talent.

The issue is that even as the stakes are higher, the goals of the characters are so much lower. Garun and Saemunder from the first book were willing to burn the world in the flames of their ambition. Kari, Elka, and Solvi just want to get through to the next day, whether the threat is local bullies or the vengeance of ancient dead gods. The book tries to have its cake and eat it, triggering an apocalypse and then showing a world 10 years later where magic is returning, and the worst abuses of the old system are being stripped away. The final section feels like a novella length draft of a third book.

I enjoyed both of these books for what they were, but there’s a lot in the New Weird that ranks higher.