The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall

Title: The Border Keeper
Series: Mkalis Cycle #1
Author:  Kerstin Hall
Source/Format: Tor.com ebook club; ebook
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Tor.com; July 16, 2019

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

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.

The second Tor.com ebook club title that I tackled at the end of April was Kerstin Hall’s The Border Keeper. It was another quick read, and I was drawn in by how the world was introduced. There was plenty of lore basically from the first page, and I was intrigued by the titular border keeper as well as the various worlds and people that inhabited them. The other main character, Vasethe, had his secrets/reasons for seeking out the border keeper. It served as the catalyst for the subsequent events. The questions I had about his motivations was one of the main reasons I kept reading.

 
If I have to describe this novella as anything, it would be the kind of story that has the characters traveling to various places for the majority of the time. These locations were interesting, detailed, and unique from one another. The rest of the story was explained in scattered pieces, while the ending was just kind of abrupt. And I closed the novella feeling as if I had missed half of the action. So, the story was just fine this time.