tamaranth | 2025/031: Out of Nowhere — Felicia Davin (Reply)

2025/031: Out of Nowhere — Felicia Davin

Caleb didn’t want anything to do with that. His double wreaking havoc on a stranger’s reputation wasn’t his problem. The whole fucking multiverse was falling apart, and more importantly, so was he. [loc. 2434]

Sequel to Edge of Nowhere, which I enjoyed enough to immediately buy the rest of the trilogy: Out of Nowhere avoids middle-volume syndrome by picking up the story with different characters and with a different mode. This is more romance-with-SFnal-elements than SF-with-romantic elements, and it's also a tale of the multiverse, complete with exact doubles, different histories, and an ambitious heist.

Caleb took a job at QSF17 (a secret research lab hidden in a captured asteroid) to rescue his childhood best friend Aidan, who's a runner -- someone able to teleport and to take things with them -- and who was abducted by representatives of Quint Services. The rescue was accomplished (see Edge of Nowhere), but Aidan is no longer able to teleport. While Aidan recovers (and broods about being in unrequited love with his straight childhood best friend) Caleb encounters his own double, realises that the multiverse is a thing, and comes up with a scheme to make Quint pay by having his double confess to Quint's crimes.

What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, most of the things that I thought might go wrong didn't: instead Davin presents a delightful, and surprisingly successful, heist, complete with a celebrity spiritualist (last seen taking delivery of a vomitous dog), a new serum, and a life-saving drug. Also identity porn, activism, fake dating, and a trillionaire getting his just deserts. There are some dark moments (and quite a few points where I wanted to yell 'just talk to him!') but the finale was very satisfactory.