Book review: Ethera Grave by Essa Hansen

The final book in The Graven trilogy by Essa Hansen is here, bringing the story of Caiden Winn and his found family of spacefaring adventurers to a climactic end. Ethera Grave picks up right where the trilogy’s fantastic second book Azura Ghost left off, with the multiverse in disarray and an impossibly powerful enemy on the rise.

We’ll be keeping the spoilers for Ethera Grave as minimal as possible in this review, but since this is the third book in the series there will be some spoilers for the first two books in the trilogy, Nophek Gloss and Azura Ghost. If you need a refresher on what happened in those earlier novels, you can find one on the author’s website.

Book review: ETHERA GRAVE by Essa Hansen (The Graven #3)

The final chapter of The Graven trilogy begins not long after the cataclysmic events of Azura Ghost, which ended with Dynast Prime Abriss Cetre initiating a wave of destruction which threatened to reshape the weird, beautiful multiverse into a monolith that adhered to her vision for a single-universe future. The Graven is a series with no shortage of epic moments, and Abriss’ turn to this dark path during the second novel set up a compelling cliffhanger ahead of book 3. What would a multiversal conflict look like when the stakes are planets, ecosystems, and cultures being indiscriminately wiped out if they’re compatible with the physics of Abriss’ own “utopian” universe, Unity?

Ethera Grave picks up that thread and runs with it. This is a conflict where entire species can disappear in the blink of an eye. But it’s not all black and white. Those who survive their universes being subsumed into Unity find that its immensity provides a sense of stability; that things are “better” there…at least in some ways. It’s just that trillions have to die for the survivors to find this happiness, and something irreplaceable is lost in the process.

The large-scale conflict is fascinating, and has layers that Hansen peels back at pivotal points in the story. The fact that there are no easy answers kept me on my toes right down to the end, and considering what a chonky book Ethera Grave is, that’s no small feat.

One last ride with Caiden, Azura and their family

Ethera Grave isn’t just some huge war story that forgets to pay attention to the people on the ground. The Graven is a deeply character-driven series, and Ethera Grave most of all. Caiden Winn has become a legend among the peoples of the multiverse, and he and his family of spacefaring rogues won’t let the multiverse vanish without a fight. But they’re also tired. Caiden, Leta, and even the antihero Threi have all been through the ringer, and there’s a pervasive feeling of things being pulled toward their inexorable end. It only works as well as it does because Hansen has spent so much time getting us into the heads of these characters and empathizing with their struggles.

How people navigate trauma has been an inherent part of The Graven right from the first chapters of the series, when young Caiden was abandoned on a planet filled with lion-like nophek. Here at the end, those traumas have tempered. They still shape the characters, but there’s also a feeling of transcendence. Ethera Grave is an emotionally intelligent book which tears its characters down to their marrow and rebuilds them in the face of ever more insurmountable odds. It’s hard to put down.

Essa Hansen’s imagination is once again on magnificent display in this book. The author makes fascinating choices with descriptions, using words and phrases in unique ways that give Ethera Grave a flavor that makes it stand out from your usual sci-fi story. You never what you’ll see next in the multiverse. The inventive creatures, dreamlike weaponry and tools, planets and races and worldbuilding make The Graven unique.

Individuality is a central theme which Hansen wraps into the main conflict. The Graven is a series with a wonderful amount of inclusivity, from neurodivergent protagonists to queer characters and those able to shift their body type at will. Hansen imagines a multiverse with room enough for all sorts of people and aliens to exist, and seeing that idea threatened by Abriss and the forces arrayed behind her is scary. The imaginative storytelling style that sets The Graven apart underlines how much there is to lose in ways that I found extremely powerful.

Something else that blew me away were the massive action set pieces, which are plentiful and epic. I was reminded of colossal anime fight scenes of the kind you’d expect to see in Final Fantasy or Dragonball Z, as characters use sci-fi tech and as well as mystical powers to clash across various alien landscapes. The fights are often gritty and brutal; thanks to the advanced tech in The Graven world, characters can recover from quite a lot of punishment, and punishment they most certainly receive. If you are the sort of reader who enjoys big action scenes, you’ll find a lot to love here.

Special kudos must be given to the animal companions in Ethera Grave. They’ve long been a part of the series, but they pop off the page even more in this book.

Saying goodbye to The Graven

We’ve talked about how Ethera Grave fares on its own merits, but since it’s also the ending to the series, we need to discuss how it fits into the overall Graven story. Is it a satisfying capstone to the series?

The answer is yes, yes it is. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone who enjoyed the previous two books in The Graven not being blown away by Ethera Grave. There’s something to be said for a series that is able to slow down at crucial moments in its endgame, giving readers space to reflect on the journey they’ve taken before plunging us into the ultimate conclusion. Ethera Grave has a few such scenes, and I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t tear up at more than one of them.

They’re necessary, both for readers and the characters, because Ethera Grave features the sort of game-changing climax that means there’s no returning to the way things were before. Hansen takes Ethera Grave in a direction that I didn’t see coming, and it made the final two hundred pages of the novel utterly riveting. The grand finale pays off everything that came before and then some, with an epilogue that has just enough ambiguity to haunt readers long after they finish.

With Ethera Grave, Essa Hansen cements The Graven as a modern space opera classic. It’s difficult to imagine a better finish to this spectacular series. I’d highly recommend it for fans of complex space opera epics like Mass Effect or Star Wars.

Verdict

Ethera Grave is a tremendous finale, bigger and bolder than its predecessors. It taps deep into the emotional core of what has always made Essa Hansen’s series so powerful. It delivers a resonant ending to one of the most imaginative sci-fi series published in recent years, and is a novel I look forward to revisiting one day.

Ethera Grave is out now from Orbit, wherever books are sold.

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