To Guard Against the Dark, the final novel set in the Trade Pact ’verse by Julie Czerneda, winningly ties together characters, plot-lines and threads into a grand, unifying finale.
Pulling off a capstone to a set of nine novels is no easy task. After the original Trade Pact Trilogy (A Thousand Words for Stranger, Ties of Power, To Trade the Stars ) and then the Stratification Trilogy (Reap the Wild Wind, Riders of the Storm, Rift in the Sky ), author Julie E. Czerneda has put together the two strands of her universe together in a capstone trilogy appropriately called Reunification.
The first two novels in the series, This Gulf of Time and Stars and The Gate to Futures Past, reintroduced readers to the characters and concepts of the series, focusing on the bonded pair of the human Jason Morgan and the Clan, Sira. Those two novels saw the Clan and their friends go on the run from a sudden and unexpected attack from the Assemblers, leading the group all the way to, in search of the origins of the Clan. They did not find it there, but they did find the remnants of the Clan societies, the Om’ray, seen in the Stratification trilogy. Together, those remnants, and the exiles led by Jason and Sira, sought the true home of the Clan. They found their origins of the Clan, and a way for the Clan to return to the realm they originally were drawn from. Sira and the Exiles, upon learning the truth of their existence and origins, decided to return to their true home dimension, and leave normal space forever.
And then Jason Morgan was returned to the Trade Pact space, to find his way without his mate.
And it is here that To Guard Against the Dark, the final novel in the sequence, begins.
The novel does start right off rather well with a summary of not just the Reunification Trilogy, but the entirety of Sira and Jason’s story. Given how deep this novel, as opposed to the previous two, is set back in Trade Pact space (which was vacated rather rapidly in This Gulf of Time and Stars), this recap of who and what does reset the scene rather well. While there is this recap. I don’t quite think it rises to the level of making the book accessible for readers who have not read any of the previous books, although admittedly, by their nature and their sidelined nature, one could have read the Trade Pact novels only and follow events here rather well and be prepared to read this novel in turn.
Having Morgan adrift from Sira in a way that he has not been for many books does take some getting used to, although we do get interludes from Sira from her existence in the AllThereIs, and the separation of the mated pair is not, shall we say, forever. Even given the start of the book (and thusly ending of The Gate to Futures Past), I didn’t doubt that there would be a reunion of the characters, but the form and nature and evolution of that reunion surprised and delighted me. I could sense the author wanting to play to the strength of the series and bring the two characters together, but it’s done in an interesting and well crafted manner.
The actual running plot of the novel is slightly thinner and somewhat more of a clothes line to deal with loose ends of the universe and characters than I might have liked. There are stakes and a major problem here, but I didn’t feel that threat, that danger quite in the way that the author seems to want to manifest. I get, intellectually, the problem, but I never quite felt the scope of the problem, the stakes, and I am not sure the characters quite managed it either.
Where the novel is much more successful is hitting some valedictory notes and bidding a final farewell to the series and its major characters, species, ideas, and subplots. Claws & Jaws: Interspecies Cuisine, the restaurant so prominent and important in the original Trade Pact series, is here in one more blaze of glory. (I so would want to eat there). The Drapsk, aliens who considered Sira to be divine, are back. The last schemes of the remaining Clan who did not return to AllThereIs, schemes which drove the entirety of the first three novels? They are here too and they are brought to final fruition in a more than satisfying way. All the glorious diverse, strange, and well rendered variety of the Trade Pact universe comes through for one last story within it. It’s natural for the author wanting to touch base with her creation one more time, and provide closure to readers who have been with the series ever since Sira looked at her hand in chapter one of A Thousand Words for Stranger and futilely tried to remember who and what she was.
Aside from my issues with the main plot, the story of Morgan and Sira comes to a conclusion that works given the characters and all that they have gone through. That really is the heart of the series, and the heart of the entirety of the Clan’s story. It’s hard to make, much less stick a landing after nine novels, complex worldbuilding and a lot of characters and ideas, but the author manages it. Well done!
