Asunder took me by storm. I ended up falling in love with the characters. It’s a world of gods, deaths, and sacrifice. But it’s also about friendship, love, and unlikely alliances. Keep reading this book review of Asunder for my full thoughts.
Summary
We choose our own gods here.
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
I will read anything compared to Sabriel. So I had already high hopes for Asunder, but whatever hopes I had were exceeded in Asunder. It’s a story that begins with such a compelling, vulnerable, mercurial main character of Karys. I was intrigued from the beginning in the ways she just cares about survival, about using her powers to make it to the next day. And what follows is not only a story about her powers, but also about the people that find their way into her life. It was a precious experience to watch her open up to the people around her.
While Karys is very much the main character, readers are treated to detailed character work for the side characters. We see the themes of families which show their viciousness, their violent sides, the switches that flip. All the ways families don’t show up for us, disappoint us, and the ways our friends, those around us, can step up to the place. Our community becomes about those who chose to be there. The group of these characters become about the secrets we tell in the middle of the night and the ones who hold our hands.
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Additionally, the world building in Asunder is expansive. It explores the foundations, the rules we think are immutable, and the worlds of gods. Navigating belief and compromise, Asunder feels detailed and all encompassing. I am already excited about more especially considering that ending! I’m fully invested now! Find Asunder on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.