The Border Keeper
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A 2020 Nommo Award Finalist
A Book Bub Best SFF Books of the Summer Pick
A Goodreads Rising Star of SFF
"A phantasmagorical picaresque through a lushly realised underworld, populated by a grotesque bestiary of fantastical creatures. . . . This twisty example of the new weird genre examines love, loss and loyalty, packing skilful world-building and a powerful emotional punch into a little over 200 pages."—The Guardian
She lived where the railway tracks met the saltpan, on the Ahri side of the shadowline. In the old days, when people still talked about her, she was known as the end-of-the-line woman.
Vasethe, a man with a troubled past, comes to seek a favor from a woman who is not what she seems, and must enter the nine hundred and ninety-nine realms of Mkalis, the world of spirits, where gods and demons wage endless war.
The Border Keeper spins wonders both epic—the Byzantine bureaucracy of hundreds of demon realms, impossible oceans, hidden fortresses—and devastatingly personal—a spear flung straight, the profound terror and power of motherhood. What Vasethe discovers in Mkalis threatens to bring his own secrets into light and throw both worlds into chaos.
Praise for The Border Keeper
"Beautifully and vividly imagined. Eerie, lovely, and surreal."—Ann Leckie
“A labyrinth of demons, dead gods, cranky psychopomps, and broken all-too-human lives. Hall is by turns wry and lush, genuine and venomous. So can I have the next one already?”—Max Gladstone
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This quiet but intricate novella, shored up by rich prose, takes readers through the eerie, fantastical terrain of the afterlife. A man named Vasethe comes to the guardian of the boundary between the world of the living and Mkalis, the spirit world. His request is an old and familiar one: for her to be his guide as he ventures into the spirit world of Mkalis to find the soul of his departed lover. As the story slowly unfurls, however, branching like the bloody, beautiful, and disorienting 999 realms of Mkalis, Vasethe's secrets slowly come to light, revealing that his goal is not quite what he made it out to be and also that his quest threatens the stability of the boundary the border keeper has protected for her hundred lifetimes. Though the final chapters feel rushed, racing so quickly to a conclusion that some details get skipped along the way, the tangle of love, loss, grief, and regret that is gradually exposed as the book's emotional core feels tender and profound. Readers more interested in the journey than the destination will savor this venture into the underworld.
