Waywarden (Briardark # 2), by S. A. Harian

[rachelmanija]

The sequel to Briardark goes a long way toward reassuring me that Harian has a plan and it will all, or mostly all, make sense in the end. It's got everything I enjoyed about the first book but the epistolatory aspect: weird biology, weird time, lost in the wilderness, spooky cults, strange games, survival horror, and people trying to help each other across extreme gaps of space and time. But it's generally better-written and definitely better-characterized, and answers an unexpected number of questions while still leaving lots of mystery to explore.

It ends not exactly on a cliffhanger, but definitely on a big "to be continued." But I now feel confident that it will be continued and I will enjoy the continuation.

BIG SPOILERS.



I figured out that Ren was Holden, but it's still a nice twist. For me the big shocker was that there are actual communities inside the Briardark. Where do all these people come from? Different dimensions? Different times?

I was also not expecting multiple versions of the same person; I'd thought they were all the same person at different points on their timeline. I'm puzzling over how that works. The time/dimension weirdness can't be confined to the Briardark if multiple different versions of Holden, Sienna, etc have entered it.

Cam feels a lot more interesting and badass in this. And I'm much more invested in Siena. Fuck Everett for gaslighting her about the time beetles, and fuck his employers.

I was very interested to learn that Holden's apparent amnesia/time loss may actually be his girlfriend having been paid to date and gaslight him! Fuck her too, and double fuck the woman who hired her.