By the time World of Trouble begins, we're in the final days of Earth, as the asteroid that's been heading for our planet has less than a week until impact. And Hank Palace, the former detective who's clung to his need for justice even as the world has crumbled, is doing his best to track down his sister to make sure she's okay. The relationship between Hank and his sister Nico has been simmering through the previous two novels in the series, but World of Trouble brings the relationship to the foreground while never abandoning the "police work in a dying world" feel that's made the series so compelling so far. Indeed, much of what's driven the Palace trilogy in its previous entries is that sense of Hank as a crusader who can't let go of his ideals, even as the world crumbles, and World of Troublebrings that even more into focus as we hit the final days and leave behind any semblance of society as the world prepares for the upcoming apocalypse. There's some surprising plot developments in World, including revelations about the group Nico's been traveling with and their plan to stop the asteroid,World is ultimately more about trying to find closure in a world that may not have enough time to provide it. In the end, World of Trouble feels like an appropriately character-driven finale to the Henry Palace trilogy, which has always been a series about how individuals cope with disaster, not about the disaster itself, and that carries through to the final chapter, which ends at the perfect time and captures a lot of complex feelings that go into its closing moments. You could argue that the two books in the Palace series after The Last Policeman never truly feel necessary, as though they're simply expanding the already great premise of the first, and it wouldn't be entirely wrong; there's never a sense that Winters is doing much more with the books from a story perspective, and mainly just allows us to spend more time getting to know Hank. But it's hard not to enjoy the way Winters pencils in the details of his world on the verge, and by the time the book ends, we feel as though we've seen a compelling portrait of how humanity might cope with such a devastating event.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe