Review – The Border Keeper (The Mkalis Cycle, Book 1) by Kerstin Hall (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release Date: July 16, 2019
ASIN: B07HF2NYN5
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Mkalis series
Source: eBook from Amazon First Reads
Rating: 4/5 stars
“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.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in The Mkalis Cycle. I got this as an ebook through Kindle First Reads.
Thoughts: Previous to reading this I had read Hall’s “Star Eater” which I thought was incredibly unique and interesting, if a bit rough around the edges. I was eager to see where her written style has gone since then. I enjoyed the “Border Keeper” quite a bit. The two characters we are introduced to are mysterious and intriguing and the world that they journey through is bizarre.
Vesethe is seeking the Boarder Keeper’s (Enis’s) help, he wants her to guide him into Mkalis to find his lost loved one. Vesethe is from the land of Ahri and we learn very little about that land in this book. However, Mkalis is a whole different place altogether, with layers of godly realms and strict rules goverining each realm that is journeyed too.
As with “Star Eater”, this book heavily relies on intriguing and complex world-building. The world of Mkalis is vast and at times a bit ambiguous and hard to understand. I loved the imagery used throughout but sometimes the unreality of it all made things a bit hard to follow. Unlike in “Star Eater”, I really loved the characters here. Both Vesethe and Enis are incredibly complex and full of mystery. Everyone (even the gods) is afraid of Enis and you never quite find out why, which just makes her all the more intriguing. I loved uber-powerful characters that refuse to use their power and are shrouded in mystery as to what they can actually do.
The plot wanders off track many times but I didn’t mind that too much, it allowed me to see more of Mkalis. I did struggle with keeping all the different gods and realms straight but if you just go with the flow, and don’t pay too much attention to all the godly background, it wasn’t too bad. I am happy that this was a shorter book because it is very dense with description and terminology and I think having it go for a lot longer would have changed it from something unique and interesting to something that was a bit too much.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this quite a bit, it a weird but strangely engaging read. I loved the intricate description, unique world-building, and mysterious characters. I loved journeying through the strange godly realms for Mkalis and unraveling the mysteries of Enis and Vesethe. This is a completely unique story written in a different writing style that may be a bit too dense and ambiguous for some. The second book in the series is out (Second Spear) and I plan on picking it up to read after I have had a bit of time for this story to steep in my mind. I would recommend to those who don’t mind ambiguous fantasy reads focused on crazy world-building and mysterious protagonists.
