Eventide, Water City

Starred review from May 15, 2023
The middle volume of McKinney’s mystery-SF Water City trilogy (following 2021’s Midnight, Water City) continues to combine brilliant worldbuilding and sophisticated plotting. It’s 2150, and catastrophic climate change has led to the flooding of coastline cities and the creation of underwater ones. The unnamed series lead, a military assassin turned criminal investigator, has moved to the titular Water City. He’s leading a more tranquil existence than he was the last time around, mostly caring for his nine-year-old daughter, while her mother is busy rising through the ranks of the local police department. That tranquility ends, though, not long after his daughter complains she’s been bitten while she was swimming in the ocean, though she sports no visible injuries. Then Ascalon’s Scar, the lingering frozen remnant of an asteroid that nearly destroyed life on Earth, which has acted as a source of light for the past 50 years, disappears from the sky, and the protagonist is savagely attacked by someone he trusts. The wild investigation that unfolds will take him to the moon and back as he comes to realize that life on Earth is under threat. McKinney keeps readers guessing about the story’s direction for much of the novel, and sticks the landing with a near-perfect conclusion. Sci-fi thriller fans will anxiously await the series finale.