A review by ergative
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

2.75

Possibly this suffers in comparison to the expectations raised by The Space Between Worlds, but narratively this didn't seem as tightly constructed. TSBW had a fantastic conceit which was directly linked to the story it wanted to tell. This one reused the same conceit, but tried to tell a different story, and the mismatch showed. Also, the different story relied on too much handwavium to be satisfying. What was the motivation for the incursions? Really, magic mud? And I don't see why that one character had to die. There was nothing about what they did after his death that could not have been equally well accomplished while also keeping him alive. So. Mmph. Didn't work. I'd read another book by this author in a new world, featuring a new conceit, in a heartbeat, but this book felt like she was trying to milk a single work of genius into two, and things got stretched too thin.