Half
Publisher Description
Living between worlds has never been comfortable, but it’s where I’ve always fit: between human and fey, illness and health, magic and reality.
I’ve spent the last six years looking for a cure for the nameless sickness eating me up. If I believed there was one out there, I would keep searching. But there isn’t, so I’ve come back home, where my past and present tangle. Come home to live . . . and to die.
But my father insists I meet Kin. He’s a healer, and determined to help, even though I’m not so hopeful anymore. But Kin isn’t what I expected, in any way. He sees me, not my illness. He reminds me of what it’s like to be alive. And I can’t help falling for him, even though I know it isn’t fair to either of us.
Kin thinks he has the cure I’ve been looking for, but it’s a cure that will change everything: me, my life, my heart. If I refuse, I could lose Kin. But if I take it, I might lose myself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lang's debut intimately intertwines romance and existential angst with the lives of the Fey folk, handling each aspect of the story with genuine sensitivity and just a bit of melodrama. Luca is a young man living in a present-day city that could be just about anywhere, with a foot in complementing, yet opposing, worlds. His human half enables him to do things for the Fey, yet keeps him from being fully accepted. His Fey half allows him to see more dimensions than the full humans can, yet is slowly killing him. He longs to know his sister, Saban, a high-court Sidhe, as an adult, yet holds himself separate as penance for leaving her behind in the land of the Fey. All of the disparate pieces pull him in varying directions until Kin, a ningyo water yokai healer, comes into his life and offers the possibility of hope. The gentle relationship between the two men follows right along with the exploration of dichotomous themes: there's a simmering sensuality that's only enhanced by their almost childlike wonder and innocence. At times the sweetness comes across as cloying, adolescent, and over the top, but for the most part this tale is successful on all its many fronts.
