Call to Quarters – Honor Raconteur

Low-key story, engaging characters. I’m starting to see that as a typical Honor-Raconteur mix. The world might as well be ours, not too many years in the future, except that ours doesn’t have magic. The Gaeldorcraeft world does have magic, but its impact is limited: Magic is a force, and practitioners can draw on the power flowing through ley lines and turn it into lift, electricity, or other simple transformations.

Another difference between this world and ours is that in 2021 parts of California including LA and Santa Barbara slid into the ocean, and they have been kept afloat since through a mixture of magic and technology. (Maybe this isn’t an actual difference. We’ll know in a couple of years.) Managing the flows of power needed to keep the cities afloat is one of the main tasks of the Gaeldorcraeft Forces.

Noriko is just starting her Gaeldorcraeft career, and the story follows her to her first posting - a normally-sleepy outpost where things are suddenly going very wrong. The book is almost a procedural. There is a bit of excitement, but much of the book is devoted to analyzing the site of what might or might not have been an accident. The characters make the book enjoyable.