The Border Keeper

"Beautifully and vividly imagined. Eerie, lovely, and surreal"—Ann Leckie 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. In The Border Keeper, debut author Kerstin Hall unfolds a lyrical underworld narrative about loss and renewal. 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. Praise for The Border Keeper "Lush prose weaves around a dark heart in this twisty debut from Kerstin Hall. A fantastical wonder on every page, but one coated in blood, death and suffering.”—JY Yang "Hall combines a sharp observational descriptive talent with brilliantly realised characters. The Border Keeper draws you deeply into every world it explores and keeps you on edge the whole way through. The story is dreamlike in the way of the most powerful dreams—vividly bright and crystal clear."—Emily Tesh