By Benjamin Percy

Hodder, out now

Fairbanks, Alaska – the place where answers can be found…

It’s been a bit of time since we had the second book in Benjamin Percy’s Comet Cycle, but it’s been worth the wait – The Sky Vault gives us a lot of answers about omnimetal and the odd events that have been occurring around the world since its arrival, as well as tying up loose ends from the first two books, and telling a gripping standalone story in its own right.

Percy tells the tale in a sometimes breathless present tense that emphasises the immediacy of the danger, and he juggles half a dozen separate plotlines skilfully until they merge in the closing chapters. Setting the book in Alaska allows him to give us characters with life experience way outside the norm of the majority of his readership, and their “can-do” attitude is essential to those characters who survive the oddities and downright horror that’s unleashed on their community.

More than enough explanation is given for this to work as an introduction to the Comet Cycle, although inevitably you’ll get a bit more if you have read The Ninth Metal and The Unfamiliar Garden (both of which I highly recommend) – and I suspect, particularly given the nature of the epilogue, that there’s more tales left to unfold in this world. In many ways this is the most cinematic of the trilogy – it feels as if John Carpenter is directing some of the more out-there moments, and there are hints that this ties into an even older mythos…

Verdict: An excellent continuation of the Comet Cycle. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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