Not as good as the two prior novels. This one doesn't stand well on its own; it reads rather like a lead-in to future books about the shift from empiricism to magic. The first 2/3 comprise a pedestrian mystery; the last 1/3, a pedestrian confrontation. I simply did not find it satisfying. ( )

Meh. Totally forgettable. Too bad. ( )

If you've been reading the tales of Henghis Hapthorn you'll know what to expect here; overlapping plot lines where it is difficult to tell the red herring from the shark coming to bite off your head. In this case Henghis decides to go off world to avoid the attentions of a disgruntled client, seeing as he's decided to not participate in an ongoing feud. The ostensible purpose is to sort out what has happened to this woman who has been stripped of her memory, but the main focus of the book is Hapthorn's musings on how to face the coming age of magic that is inexorably going to overtake his reality. In the end Hapthorn has a decision to make about what options to execute, seeing as his rationality is no longer enough, and his place on Old Earth seems increasingly insecure. To say more would be premature. ( )

When I was first introduced to the writings of Matthew Hughes, I found him to be extremely wordy, and felt he couldn't quite get to whatever point he was making.

I'm not sure what happened, but over time, I managed to read Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, and heard somewhere through the grapevine that Hughes' Archonate stories take place some time after the Dying Earth, on Old Earth. Then, something clicked, and I started to enjoy them.

Hughes has two protagonists that exist in his Old Earth universe. One of them is Guth Bandar, who has the ability to enter the common subconscious existence of sentient beings. The other is Henghis Hapthorn, one of the best discriminators money can buy.

Hapthorn is like Sherlock Holmes and Macguyver as a gestalt entity. Not only can he deduce (or is it induce?) like the best of them, but also, he is technologically savvy, building his own machines to combat with the security intrusions of the future setting.

The setting itself is a monumental pangalactic miasma, burdened under its overreliance on technology, and resting at the cusp of a chaotic takeover of magical thought and practice. Hapthorn, one of the few to be aware of such an impending change, still holds on to his technological ways, and makes ends meet by acting as a discriminator on the behalf of Old Earth's upper crust.

While on a case, he runs into an ordinary offworld woman, who somehow strikes his sympathetic nerve. He doesn't find her the least bit attractive, but is compelled to assist her on her quest to regain her recently purloined memories. Once his current matter is resolved, he takes her on as a client, against his better judgment, and races across space to help her find her identity. Their journey spans the farthest reaches of space, and finds itself ending in a scenario that would make Guy Ritchie proud.

The book features a colorful cast of characters, including Hapthorn's intuition, manifesting itself in an independent body. This intuition, unlike Hapthorn himself, is studying magic, in order for some semblance of order to exist after the change. Likewise, there are power-hungry elitists, revenge-seeking shut-ins, petty and argumentative computers, and even a godlike avatar.

Hughes goes over the top in his writing, which gives it some of that classic fantasy appeal, only set in a science fiction setting. Hughes has found a perfect blend between the two, and is absolutely deserving of the genre label science fantasy.

If you like Jack Vance, or writers inspired by such, or if you are a current fan of Hughes works (most commonly appearing in the pages of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), you may very well find it worth your time to pick up a copy of Hespira. ( )