A reunion of old friends, a will and curse, and a locked-room murder mystery that escalates, featuring new-ish mom investigator Kembral Thorne jumping around the levels of reality to solve the mystery, stop the curse, and solve the murder(s), all while avoiding (mostly supernatural) enemies and a giant spectral wolf, and trying to keep things professional with girlfriend who is also on the job. That’s most of the things going on in The Last Soul Among Wolves. Since this is the second volume of the Echo Archives series, there’s less worldbuilding, but to make up for it, there is a handful of new characters and the backstories to go with them. Basically, Jaycel drags Kembral into a will reading that turns out to be connected to a childhood dare that Kem missed out, the classic break into the creepy old mansion on the shore and maybe less classicsign your name in blood in the book you find in there.
This is a good mystery (or several that end up being inter-related), and there are some interesting new people and connections, although one of the interesting ones dies just as they are getting interesting (obviously, that was on purpose). Old enemies and friends get involved but there are enough new folks to fill things out that nothing gets old or too repetitive. There’s some running incredulity at the name of Kem’s babysitter, but the payoff for that actually works; I hope we get to see more of him. The solution involves multiple forces, both human and not (mostly not), and because there’s more than one party involved in various ways, at least some part is going to be a little bit of a surprise at least at some point. This also means that the reveals can be spread out at least a little to keep things interesting, which is important because the sense of time in this story really doesn’t seem plausible. For a story taking place in roughly 48 hours, there’s an awful lot happening. Maybe time in the Echoes works different (I don’t remember anything about whether or not that’s really the case), but for all the back and for that Kem does between various places, it doesn’t feel like the time frame should work.
The locked room is actually a decaying mansion on a thin strip of land that gets flooded at high tide, so without boats, everyone is stuck in the house until help can get there. Unless you can jump through levels of reality, which Kembral can. Rika’s along for trips down into the Echoes too. Rika’s heritage gets a little more filled out as in what it means for her to be her mother’s child, but her and Kembral’s relationship just seems a little stuck. Their banter and even just being together doesn’t really read romantic partners which is a shame, but it’s not a deal breaker since this isn’t really a romance. But then again, they keep drawing attention to that, so why it doesn’t really develop is a little irritating. Knowing how things turn out, it actually does make some sense why that connection keeps getting brought up, but it does make it kind of a tedious until the relevant information gets revealed which isn’t until pretty late.