Michael Barnes
Our plucky protagonist is the fiercely alone Karys Eska who has a well-earned ‘fuck around and find out’ attitude a result of a foolishly desperate act in her teens when she bargained her soul away to a terrifying eldritch being, Sabaster. Giving her the abilities of a Deathspeaker; she can communicate with the newly departed and see things through the 'veneer' but means at some indetermined future Sabaster will 'claim' her which is just as terrifying as it sounds.
Karys earns money (but not a lot) using her gifts to investigate suspicious deaths around the city. However, her latest job went horribly wrong and leaves Ferain Taliade the last survivor of a slaughtered embassy existing in the material world only as Karys’s shadow and ever present voice in her head.
When Karys, her ever present soul shadow the mysterious Ferain and vivacious scholar Winola head to Varesli, Ferain's home country, the story becomes a road trip that involves travel by giant spider and encounters with skin-thieves. As in other Kerstin Hall novels her worldbuilding is subtly revealed - no long clunky blocks exposition devlivered by sidewalk story tellers - anything she needs you to understand, Karys sees, or interacts with, or has cause to explain or have explained to her, succinctly and elegantly and there is something new to discover—and marvel at or be horrified by—at every turn.
This dark miasma of a story that for all the fantasy and world building elements seems to have been crafted to explore the consequences of desperate choices. All of the major characters have made some that they were driven to make by their extreme circumstances.
A few found the ending unsatisfying but I think it's well crafted and given all we learned about these gods and the characters consistent.
Our plucky protagonist is the fiercely alone Karys Eska who has a well-earned ‘fuck around and find out’ attitude a result of a foolishly desperate act in her teens when she bargained her soul away to a terrifying eldritch being, Sabaster. Giving her the abilities of a Deathspeaker; she can communicate with the newly departed and see things through the 'veneer' but means at some indetermined future Sabaster will 'claim' her which is just as terrifying as it sounds.
Karys earns money (but not a lot) using her gifts to investigate suspicious deaths around the city. However, her latest job went horribly wrong and leaves Ferain Taliade the last survivor of a slaughtered embassy existing in the material world only as Karys’s shadow and ever present voice in her head.
When Karys, her ever present soul shadow the mysterious Ferain and vivacious scholar Winola head to Varesli, Ferain's home country, the story becomes a road trip that involves travel by giant spider and encounters with skin-thieves. As in other Kerstin Hall novels her worldbuilding is subtly revealed - no long clunky blocks exposition devlivered by sidewalk story tellers - anything she needs you to understand, Karys sees, or interacts with, or has cause to explain or have explained to her, succinctly and elegantly and there is something new to discover—and marvel at or be horrified by—at every turn.
This dark miasma of a story that for all the fantasy and world building elements seems to have been crafted to explore the consequences of desperate choices. All of the major characters have made some that they were driven to make by their extreme circumstances.
A few found the ending unsatisfying but I think it's well crafted and given all we learned about these gods and the characters consistent.