Asunder by Kerstin Hall
I would like to thank Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Solaris
Published – 15/1
Price - £10.99 paperback £5.99 ebook
We choose our own gods here.
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they must journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors, and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
Sometimes it is the fantastical I just need in a story when the world is like….this…(waves hands). As much as I am a sucker for thematic tales, chewy subjects and a touch of darkness every now I then to clear the palette I need a reminder of adventure, spectacle and that there can be other worlds than these. In Kerstin hall’s new fantasy novel Asunder I found a very enjoyable tale that took me on a fascinating journey of gods, magic and various dangerous bargains.
Karys Esha is a Deathspeaker, able able to summon and hear the last words of those who died. This means she gets a lot of business but often murky to pay the rent. A trip to an underwater cave for smugglers though results in her nearly dying horribly. While fleeing a monster she meets a seriously injured man Ferain from her country’s greatest rival who is as trapped as she is. Karys’ solution is to use her skills to bind the man in a trapped moment of time within her body to escape. Which she does but she then finds out she cannot easily unbind Ferain and now a group of merciless assassins are also on her tail. She goes on a tricky journey to Ferain’s own country and many more dangers await but she may actually get wealthy so that s her motivation.
Asunder is quite inventive at throwing obstacles and a great deal of imagination at the reader. The initial chapters plunge us delightfully in the deep end and I really liked how Hall doesn’t go overboard explaining everything at the start. Instead, we get a truly weird and quite horrific first encounter with the first of many supernatural entities in the story and the effectively soul fusing of Ferain and Karys. This results in a fascinating double act where Karys is the human and Ferain tends to be in the form of her shadow and only she can hear him (initially). There is a lovely old school banter attitude to these two of two quite sarcastic people needling one another and yet becoming friends. Both hide secrets from one another and that allows for an unusual form of internal tension as each tries to understand where the other comes from. They’re incredibly likeable with the hard-nosed but kind Karys to the slightly posher than he realises but quite funny Ferain. They are the heart of the story and I wanted to know what happened next.
Hall indeed then throws a lot and again I was impressed how much there is. We get feuding nations, underworld bosses, deposed gods, bargaining demons, magic and did I mention the huge spiders that cross dimensions of space? This is a huge world that we slowly get to explore and its interesting. Demonic bargains in particular drive Karys for reasons initially unknown and Ferain belongs to a once powerful country that lost all its gods when the world finally rebelled and killed them in revenge. The magic is weird and unpredictable and allows for both battles and fascinating inventions from lifts to the aforementioned giant spiders. Some books just do one or two unusual things but Hall impressed me by going for it. Slowly all those unexplained elements from the early chapters get explained and it’s a very natural progression rather than pure exposition for exposition sake’s
My one issue is the pacing. When you’re bonded to a spirit that may be bad for your health and everyone tells you you’re in danger I would expect pace but weirdly halfway we then take quite a few detours. Now they’re interesting detours and in the process the duo does pick up some fascinating supporting characters I’ll let you meet yourselves but there are times it feels like the story is drifting a little (again in a quite old-school fashion or think side quests in a fantasy game. When we get to the eventual destination again just when you think the pace will speed up, we seem to slow down into some understanding of various character’s relationships instead. There is a very interesting ending that I hope means we get a second tale soon, but it does feel at times a little baggy at times, my hope is now all the key aspects of the world are explained the next tale is a little more focused.
Asunder though was a fantasy novel where I had that most unusual feeling of fun. There is danger, action and indeed some much-missed character banter plus a sense of spectacle that’s something I sometimes don’t get enough of in my fantasy reading. Asunder is a hugely enjoyable read ad I hope to see more from Hall in the future! Highly recommended for readers needing something fun to explore!
