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The Veiled Worlds #3
Guardian
The grand city of Movoc-under-Keeper lies in ruins. The sinister puppet men have revealed their true nature, and their plan to tear down the veil between worlds. To have a chance of defeating them, Tanyana must do the impossible, and return to the world where they were created, on the other side of the veil. Her journey will force her into a terrible choice, and test just how much she is willing to sacrifice for the fate of two worlds.
- GenresScience FictionFantasy
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2014
3 people are currently reading
298 people want to read
About the author
Jo Anderton
20 books64 followersJoanne Anderton lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and too many pets. By day she is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor. By night, weekends and lunchtimes she writes dark fantasy, horror a little bit of science fiction and a whole lot of weird stuff in between.
Her short fiction has been published in a variety of places, including Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Midnight Echo. She was shortlisted for the 2009 Aurealis Award for best young adult short story.
Her debut novel, Debris (Book One the Veiled Worlds Series) will be published by Angry Robot Books in 2011, followed by Suited in 2012.
Her short fiction has been published in a variety of places, including Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Midnight Echo. She was shortlisted for the 2009 Aurealis Award for best young adult short story.
Her debut novel, Debris (Book One the Veiled Worlds Series) will be published by Angry Robot Books in 2011, followed by Suited in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 7, 2014
This third and final book of The Veiled Worlds is better than both the previous two and they were excellent. Guardian is a solid conclusion to this story. While Debris and Suited were very much in the science-fantasy category, with Suited leaning a bit more towards SF, Guardian is unashamedly science-fiction, yet unique in its SF stance. It's like The Matrix meets Shadowrun meets the Q Continuum, all mixed with Anderton magic. Highly recommended.
January 28, 2016
This is my third book reviewed as part of the Australian Women Writer's Challenge for 2014. I've reviewed this over at my blog The Conversationalist: Guardian by Jo Anderton (Book 3 in the Veiled Worlds series). Originally published here on Goodreads but adjusted to align with my general practice of reviewing for AWWC on my blog.
July 10, 2014
I read this entire trilogy over a pretty short span of time, without really stopping in between to rate the books or post reviews. That being the case, this review is going to cover all three, with an eye toward not spoiling anything from the first two (and even then, not really spoiling anything that isn't in the book's blurb).
One of the things I find most astounding about Debris is that it's pretty obviously a fantastical world, but it behaves like a science-fictional world. People have these extra powers, but society has built up around those powers, using them to create the same sorts of outcomes (running water, heat, light) that we get from technology. (There's an interesting sort of blind spot there, when you think about it: pions are used to get water into houses, in the same way we use gravity. One wonders why, internally, no one ever thought to use pions to life the water, and then let gravity take its course.) Heck, they even went through what is essentially the magical version of an industrial revolution. The world is essentially the inverse of science fantasy: rather than a fantastic world with science fictional trappings (e.g. Star Wars), it's a pretty solidly (alt-)science fictional world with fantastic trappings. I'm not sure that there's a name for that, but there should be.
And then, of course, we discover that the world has these science-fictional underpinnings because it's actually a sci-fi world that just happens to present as fantastical through something like Clarke's Law. There's something like actual science under the hood, running everything.
In addition to all of the world building going on, I thought the various factions were also quite believable. They're all working for their own ends, and it just happens that some of their ends line up some of the time. I also appreciate that none of the factions (except, perhaps, Tanyana herself, toward the end) have anything approaching a complete view of the world, and for the most part they don't care to learn what they don't know. This allows each individual group's actions to make sense from their own perspective, even while the reader (or Tanyana) is going "no, wait, there are bigger problems here". And, when they're confronted by the bigger issues, most of groups just go "well, we'll deal with that later" if they care at all, which is a marvelously realistic response.
Without spoiling too much, I really liked the way the story wraps itself up. There's a little bit of luck involved in solving things, but mostly it's a case of getting the right expertise into place, rather than stumbling across a magic mcguffin. It's also interesting to note that, while the central conflict is rendered no longer an issue, it's resolution actually comes from solving an entirely different problem. There's probably a lesson there: sometimes the solution to an impossible problem is actually found by realizing the problem has been incorrectly stated to begin with.
All told, an excellent series, and well worth reading.
One of the things I find most astounding about Debris is that it's pretty obviously a fantastical world, but it behaves like a science-fictional world. People have these extra powers, but society has built up around those powers, using them to create the same sorts of outcomes (running water, heat, light) that we get from technology. (There's an interesting sort of blind spot there, when you think about it: pions are used to get water into houses, in the same way we use gravity. One wonders why, internally, no one ever thought to use pions to life the water, and then let gravity take its course.) Heck, they even went through what is essentially the magical version of an industrial revolution. The world is essentially the inverse of science fantasy: rather than a fantastic world with science fictional trappings (e.g. Star Wars), it's a pretty solidly (alt-)science fictional world with fantastic trappings. I'm not sure that there's a name for that, but there should be.
And then, of course, we discover that the world has these science-fictional underpinnings because it's actually a sci-fi world that just happens to present as fantastical through something like Clarke's Law. There's something like actual science under the hood, running everything.
In addition to all of the world building going on, I thought the various factions were also quite believable. They're all working for their own ends, and it just happens that some of their ends line up some of the time. I also appreciate that none of the factions (except, perhaps, Tanyana herself, toward the end) have anything approaching a complete view of the world, and for the most part they don't care to learn what they don't know. This allows each individual group's actions to make sense from their own perspective, even while the reader (or Tanyana) is going "no, wait, there are bigger problems here". And, when they're confronted by the bigger issues, most of groups just go "well, we'll deal with that later" if they care at all, which is a marvelously realistic response.
Without spoiling too much, I really liked the way the story wraps itself up. There's a little bit of luck involved in solving things, but mostly it's a case of getting the right expertise into place, rather than stumbling across a magic mcguffin. It's also interesting to note that, while the central conflict is rendered no longer an issue, it's resolution actually comes from solving an entirely different problem. There's probably a lesson there: sometimes the solution to an impossible problem is actually found by realizing the problem has been incorrectly stated to begin with.
All told, an excellent series, and well worth reading.
September 6, 2014
Guardian by Jo Anderton is the third book in the Veiled Worlds Trilogy. I have to admit, when I read book two, Suited, I didn't realise there was going to be a sequel (although in retrospect, I probably should have). And then the publisher of the first two books didn't pick up the third, so it was a longer wait than usual for this concluding volume. Luckily FableCroft did pick up Guardian, so we can all enjoy the ending to the story started in Debris. I have to warn you, though: if you haven't read the first two books everything about Guardian, including the blurb, is made of spoilers.
Guardian was an unusual book, more so, I think, than the first two which at least shared a common setting. I'd seen a lot of people compare the Veiled Worlds series to anime aesthetics but I didn't really see the resemblance until Guardian. A large part of the story takes place in a different world with little in common with the world of Movoc-under-Keeper. In some ways that world is more similar to our own — mostly in the way that people don't control pions with their minds to build stuff — but it's a pretty extreme post-apocalyptic type of a world.
While Tanyana is there, we learn a lot about how the two worlds are connected, what the Keeper, the Other and the Veil are (although the latter takes a bit longer to become clear) and the connection between worlds. At the end of Suited there was a cataclysmic disruption that did not leave all the characters we've come to know intact. The ramifications of that are explored further here and, most notably, we find out what was going on with "Halves" having a special connection to the Keeper.
I have to say, I had somewhat mixed feelings about one character who was badly injured and then sort of magically fixed. On the one hand, she agreed to what happened (the being fixed part, not the badly injured part), but on the other, I couldn't help but feel the fix took away a lot of her agency and, crucially, affected her personhood and identity. I would have liked to have seen the consequences of that expired more fully rather than just touched upon in a sort of epilogue.
What makes Guardian hard to review is that it's so different from the first two books in setting. I would like to, at some point, reread all three books in succession to get the full impact of the flow of the story. And in case it isn't already obvious, Guardian is not the point at which to pick up the series. It's definitely the kind of trilogy where you should try to read the first two books first.
I quite enjoyed Guardian and indeed the entire Veiled Worlds trilogy. I highly recommend it to fans of technological fantasy or just fantasy which differs from the mainstream. The worldbuilding is very original and one of the real strengths of the series. The magic is very structured; leading some to call the series science fiction. In that light, fans of slipstream and genre-bending fiction should find much to like here.
4 / 5 stars
You can read more of my reviews on my blog.
Guardian was an unusual book, more so, I think, than the first two which at least shared a common setting. I'd seen a lot of people compare the Veiled Worlds series to anime aesthetics but I didn't really see the resemblance until Guardian. A large part of the story takes place in a different world with little in common with the world of Movoc-under-Keeper. In some ways that world is more similar to our own — mostly in the way that people don't control pions with their minds to build stuff — but it's a pretty extreme post-apocalyptic type of a world.
While Tanyana is there, we learn a lot about how the two worlds are connected, what the Keeper, the Other and the Veil are (although the latter takes a bit longer to become clear) and the connection between worlds. At the end of Suited there was a cataclysmic disruption that did not leave all the characters we've come to know intact. The ramifications of that are explored further here and, most notably, we find out what was going on with "Halves" having a special connection to the Keeper.
I have to say, I had somewhat mixed feelings about one character who was badly injured and then sort of magically fixed. On the one hand, she agreed to what happened (the being fixed part, not the badly injured part), but on the other, I couldn't help but feel the fix took away a lot of her agency and, crucially, affected her personhood and identity. I would have liked to have seen the consequences of that expired more fully rather than just touched upon in a sort of epilogue.
What makes Guardian hard to review is that it's so different from the first two books in setting. I would like to, at some point, reread all three books in succession to get the full impact of the flow of the story. And in case it isn't already obvious, Guardian is not the point at which to pick up the series. It's definitely the kind of trilogy where you should try to read the first two books first.
I quite enjoyed Guardian and indeed the entire Veiled Worlds trilogy. I highly recommend it to fans of technological fantasy or just fantasy which differs from the mainstream. The worldbuilding is very original and one of the real strengths of the series. The magic is very structured; leading some to call the series science fiction. In that light, fans of slipstream and genre-bending fiction should find much to like here.
4 / 5 stars
You can read more of my reviews on my blog.
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July 5, 2015Katharine is a judge for the Sara Douglass 'Book Series' Award. This entry is the personal opinion of Katharine herself, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.
To be safe, I won't be recording my thoughts (if I choose to) here until after the AA are over.
To be safe, I won't be recording my thoughts (if I choose to) here until after the AA are over.
December 24, 2014
I continue to enjoy this series.High points for the level of creativity and easy to understand sci-fi terminology.Although the story is complex its told in a way that the reader can grasp the concepts without frying your brain .This is sci-fi done right.
July 17, 2014
So, so good... And now it's over. Now please Jo!
February 9, 2015
Amazing climax. Really brought everything together in a deeply satisfying way, which can't have been easy with such a fascinating world.
October 15, 2018
The finale of the series draws the characters into an epic finale with lots of surprises and twists. There's plenty of action and an apocalyptic ending which, looking back, was nicely foreshadowed in the earlier books. Well worth the read.
March 6, 2016
I spent most of the book (more than half really) confused and lost. Nothing made any sense and honestly that could be my faulty memory and my less than scientific brain. A lot of what was going on I simply couldn't picture and therefore couldn't follow. This book seemed to start in left field and slowly, oh so slowly bring itself around to right field when the two stories converged and finally started making sense.
All in all I did enjoy this book (well the last 100 pages or so) and thought the series was unique and the world-building (literally) was amazing.
All in all I did enjoy this book (well the last 100 pages or so) and thought the series was unique and the world-building (literally) was amazing.
November 14, 2015
Because it was released through a different publisher, it took me a while to realise this book was even out! It was...different from the previous two. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because internally it held up, but I also missed the world I thought I'd be reading about. It was a satisfying conclusion, and included many really visceral moments that I loved, but overall I didn't entirely buy in.
November 19, 2014
It's good to see this final installment in the Veiled Worlds series published and available. While I mostly enjoyed it, I got lost a few times while reading it and felt the book ended with more questions than answers for the reader.
July 20, 2014
Good read.
December 5, 2017
A powerful ending to a terrific series. Such a different world peopled with real and flawed but convincing characters. I loved every minute of it.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews