“As with her debut novel, the immersive and compelling Star Eater, Kerstin Hall chucks you straight into Asunder and asks you to keep up. She is a master of consistent, sometimes subtle worldbuilding; anything she needs you to understand, Karys sees, or interacts with, or has cause to explain or have explained to her, succinctly and elegantly.

This story sits just under the skin, a tangle of questions about faith and shame and what a person does with the power they have—or that is given to them. It is, immersively and emotionally, about survival: how a person survives, what they do to survive, what they endure while surviving, and where the choices they make in order to survive wind up taking them. I can’t shake Karys and her choices out of my head, and frankly, I don’t want to.

This world deserves more story, and more time, and more readers, and I hope it gets all three” — Reactor

“Kerstin Hall writes sharp, fierce stories with precise and visceral prose, and with worldbuilding that possesses a keen sense for the weird, the haunting, the marvellous, and the twistedly strange. Asunder is only her fourth long-form work, her second novel (after 2021’s Star Eater and the novella duo The Border Keeper and Second Spear) and it is every bit as vividly compelling as I’ve come to expect from Hall – indeed, even more so.

Karys Eska is an independent deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying and unforgiving otherworldly being. She won’t survive her compact being called in – not, at least, in any form recognisable as Karys Eska – and while she doesn’t know exactly when that will be, her time is running short.

…Asunder strikes me as a novel interested in the consequences of desperate choices. All of the major characters have made choices that they were driven to by their circumstances: All of them have been, or are, trapped in some way by the consequences (foreseen or otherwise) of those choices. Many of those choices had no real good outcome. Karys – prickly, foul-mouthed, fighting with her last breath to be a survivor, determined to find some way around the compact with Sabaster that, she’s just learned, will lead to personal consequences even more horrifying than she’d previously imagined – is a deeply compelling protagonist. Her relationships with Ferain, with Winola, and with figures from her past – and the relationships of the other characters in the novel with each other – are all fraught and complicated things, filled with the silences, the secrets, and the partial understandings that undergird real relationships between real, complicated people.

Asunder is a thoughtful novel, complex and deep. It’s also a fast-paced, tense ride through a world that doesn’t hold back from glittering weirdness. Luxury travel in the bellies of dimension-hopping spiders, weapons that turn a person inside out, trains that run on rails made of light, drugs made from the corpses of dead gods, godlike beings with hundreds of wings and faces in their groins: Hall holds back neither wonder nor horror. But throughout, Hall’s skill and control of the narrative never falters. All the moving pieces slot into place, building into a nail-biting climax.

The ending leaves open as many questions as it answers, but although I would desperately love to see a sequel, Asunder is a complete narrative just as it is. A phenomenal one: I can’t recommend it highly enough.” — Locus

“I had no idea what to expect when I opened to the first page of Asunder. Kerstin Hall has cemented herself as a brilliantly unpredictable writer. Her surrealist concepts are unlike any other, and she’s unafraid to go to the darkest, weirdest places. Asunder shines as a uniquely ambitious accomplishment among her stellar catalog, and I need you to know that the description I’m about to give pales in comparison to the vibrancy of the actual text. In a world of many gods and demons, we meet Karys, a death speaker, an ability which allows her to peer beyond the veil and recall the whispers of those that have passed. She uses this in a sort of freelance detective capacity, and is on a gig when the Constructs—translucent monsters that eat humans whole—find her. While running from the Constructs she collides with Ferain Taliade, a dying man who has managed to stay just slightly out of reach of the monsters and desperately needs her help. She agrees to magically bind him to her so he’ll stay alive, but he’s sort of living inside her now, which is inconvenient in a lot of ways. Especially considering she’s secretly the vassal for a very powerful eldritch being, not to mention the type of person who keeps getting pulled into dangerous situations. This is a complex, emotional rollercoaster from Hall that grabs you from the first page and never lets go. Oh and also, in this one they use big dogs like taxis.” — Reactor

“In this dazzling and eclectic fantasy from Hall (Star Eater), a scrappy, foul-mouthed medium wrangles with an impressively imagined cohort of skin thieves, smugglers, and shape-shifters—as well as her own inner demons. At 17, Karys Eska ran away from an abusive father and sold her soul to the god Sabaster to become a deathspeaker, one able to communicate with the deceased. When, years later, a job gone wildly wrong leaves her stranded in a sea cave, a stranger saves her life. Feraine Taliade turns out to be a diplomat from a neighboring country who survived an assassination attempt that left him badly wounded. Karys tries to use her powers to save him—and by fluke instead attaches him to her as her shadow. At first merely awkward, the situation quickly proves perilous; the assassins now pursue Karys as she sets out in search of a magic that can separate her from Feraine. Along the way, the pair become emotionally attached, but the odds that both of them will survive a powder-and-potion-induced separation are slim. Adding to the danger, Sabaster grows increasingly persistent in summoning Karys to his underworld, where he aims to make her his bride. Though extraordinarily complex, the plot never loses focus or pace. With elements of gut-turning horror, adventure, and romance, this is a powerhouse.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“If you play Dungeons and Dragons and love the Warlock class and their pacts with mysterious, often otherworldly beings, then Asunder by Kerstin Hall is the perfect book for you.

In a world where magic users are allowed to choose their gods, Karys Eska is bound to an eldritch creature with three faces and hundreds of wings who has gifted her the ability to communicate with the dead. Karys uses her powers to help investigate strange deaths in the city where she lives, knowing that, one day, she’ll be forced permanently to the real where her benefactor exists. Her life takes an unexpected turn, however, when she meets a dying man who she inadvertently binds to her shadow.” — Polygon

“The old gods are dead, and the new ones are horrific. Karys Eska is bound to a new god, and the price for her ability to speak to the dead is, on an unspecified day, to be snatched away to a realm of terrors. When she attempts to rescue a dying stranger from uncanny creatures, she accidentally merges Ferain with her shadow. If Eska learns how to free him, he’ll make her wealthy. But they soon discover that the creature attack didn’t happen by chance, and forces will pursue them across nations to ensure their deaths. Along the way, both learn that they can’t outrun their pasts, but maybe some parts are worth holding on to. Hall (Second Spear) weaves a fascinating tapestry of mythology and divine politics that she underscores with deep, complicated relationships. Nearly every character struggles with trust, unequal power dynamics, and the expectations of class and nation, despite also having an intense desire for connection. The novel’s charming interludes between deadly situations are few but powerful.

VERDICT This compelling mix of horror, found family, and intricate mythology will appeal to those who loved Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.” — Library Journal, Starred Review

“A shamed warrior becomes responsible for the salvation of all Mkalis’s realms when an old enemy returns for revenge in Hall’s exciting sequel to The Border Keeper. The many realms of Mkalis serve as an afterlife for residents of a world called Ahri. Warrior Tyn, of Res Lfae’s realm, has been suspended from her position as Second Spear and struggles to come to terms with the role she played in the battle with the goddess Kan Fanieq and the knowledge she’s gained about her past life. Determined to make amends, Tyn agrees to testify at the Tribunal of Kan Buyak, who will be tried for conspiring with Kan Fanieq to forge illegal God Instruments. Intrigues arise when Res Lfae’s realm is attacked. With the realm’s leader missing, it falls to Tyn; First Spear, Vehn; and Rion, the newest initiate of the Spears, to withstand the invasion. Though some ensuing plot twists feel shakily set up, each of the realms within Mkalis is richly imagined and unique, and Hall describes both the land’s chilling horrors and its lush wetlands in vivid detail as Tyn and her allies search for a weapon powerful enough to protect their home. The innovative worldbuilding is sure to enchant fantasy readers.” — Publishers Weekly

“The second book in Hall’s Mkalis Cycle will not disappoint readers of her standout fantasy The Border Keeper (2019). When readers reenter this rich, complex world of twisting godly politics and rule-based realms, Hall zooms them in on Tyn. She’s still recovering from the last book’s events, hurt and reeling, trying to balance new revelations with her loyalty to Res Lfae, ruler of Tahmais. When a lying villain with an impossible weapon comes to her realm to tear it apart, Tyn has to band together with the reticent First Spear Vehn, who hates her, and the cynical Rion, who’s still new to Mkalis and completely lost. All three characters go through convincing transformations in this eerie, suspenseful story based in Hall’s deeply unsettling world that gleams at the corners. The scenes are cinematically visceral, with pages soaked in sensory detail, atmosphere, and the tense promise of danger lurking at the edges of every rule-bound realm. Readers will feel they’re dropped into the story—and that will undoubtedly make their skin crawl, in all the right ways. This horror-fantasy will have readers waiting impatiently for the next volume in Hall’s dark series.” — Booklist, Starred Review

First Novels

Star Eater, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom)

Novellas

A Blessing of Unicorns, Elizabeth Bear (Audible Originals 10/20; Asimov’s 9-10/21)
Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Novelettes

“The Red Mother”, Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com 6/23/21)

“This is an exquisitely gripping novel with a bloody, unflinching heart. And yet, for all the intricate brutalities of its worldbuilding, it holds out the hope of revolutionary change….The queerness of Star Eater rests as much in its unsqueamish examination of power relations and the meaty, bloody metaphor of its magical mechanics as in its normalising treatment of queer relationships and the sexualities of its major characters: it’s a novel with teeth, and it sets those teeth into a thematic argument about – an indictment of – the hereditary transmission and constant maintenance of power that comes from acts of, essentially, theft and consumption….It’s striking how full and complex Hall’s world is here, how invested with communities and meanings. Neither support for the Sisterhood nor opposition to it is an uncomplicated thing. Hall writes with striking, assured pose, bringing her world and characters vividly to life. Both in style and (thematic) substance, her work here reminds me of Max Gladstone’s Craft novels, of Aliette de Bodard’s novel-length fantasy work, of A.K. Larkwood’s blisteringly good debut The Unspoken Name. (Hardly surprising, then, to find both Gladstone and Larkwood have contributed advance praise.) Star Eater is a fantastic book. I recommend it highly.” — Locus