In Kerstin Hall’s debut, The Border Keeper, we met Eris (the border keeper in question), and a man named Vasethe who needed her help crossing the border she kept. Which border is that, you ask? Why, the ways into Mkalis, the 999 realms of the afterlife—a multiverse replete with gods, demons, monsters, magic. Each realm is ruled by larger than life figures of myth, all involved in a delicate balance, lest the entirety of Mkalis fall in on itself.
Hall’s second installment in the realms of Mkalis focuses on a handful of new characters, but this is a sequel, not a standalone. Tyn, a soul who in death has found herself the Second Spear to a demon ruler, questions who she used to be in life, and what she must do now to save her ruler and realm.
Second Spear primarily follows Tyn as she reels from knowledge she gained in The Border Keeper: Vasethe knew her when she was alive. She had a different name, and she was no soldier; she was a scholar. Upon return to her realm, she finds she cannot just go back to the way things were. As the leader of her company, Vehn the First Spear, continues to mock Tyn despite how beloved she is by their ruler Res Lfae. The realms begin to shake with the echoes of consequences from The Border Keeper, Tyn finds herself thrust into the middle of a crisis. Stuck with the First Spear and a new, sullen recruit, Tyn must traverse the realms of Mkalis to find an answer to the conquering tide of an old enemy, while also coming to terms with her fracturing identity.
Buy the Book
Second Spear
With the Mkalis Cycle books, Hall has literally hundreds and hundreds of fantastical stories she could tell across the 999 realms. And so far, based off of her first two stories in these multitude of realms, she’s having an absolute ball as she ricochets from realms of flame to realms of horror, from clockwork nightmares to mind-obliterating feasts, fog that lurks for souls, forests that yearn for bodies, and more and more. Pairing her intense and bountiful imagination alongside her rich prose that sings with momentum, each single sentence doing the work of ten, there is no way that anything Kerstin Hall creates won’t leave a lasting image in her readers’ minds.
But as in any story, the depth and imagination of worldbuilding can only be so enthralling without the care and richness of the characters who populate these myriad realms of the afterlife. Tyn is a worthy successor after spending time with the legendary Eris and the mysterious Vasethe; rather than having far too much knowledge of Mkalis or knowing practically nothing about it, we have Tyn who is squarely in the middle. In fact, her life-after-life had been fairly comfortable. She was a solider, she was good at it, she had friends, and maybe not a commander that loved her, but certainly a ruler that did. And yet, the reason Tyn makes such a good protagonist is that all of the normality of her life, the comforts she’s gotten used to, have been completely upended because of her encounter with her former life in The Border Keeper. Souls in Mkalis are not meant to remember their lives; the past is supposed to stay in the land of heartbeats and mortals. And poor, conflicted Tyn, so happy in her life as Second Spear, has had that comfort and happiness turned upside down.
And it’s here, Hall folds in world and character both as Tyn must solve the mystery of herself, not just who she was and who she’s been after death, but really: who does she want to be next? ith effortless grace, Hall folds the personal journey of Tyn into the journey of Mkalis as a universe as character actions, informed by their trauma and history, like the wings of a butterfly, can have ramifications and shape all 999 realms.
Second Spear is an invitation to the beautiful, haunting, and raucous mind of Kerstin Hall, a writer who I trust to light the candle of my imagination and see me through, time and again. Tyn’s journey is enthralling as she struggles to make sense of the life she found after life, and as she bounds from realm to realm, understand she is not shackled to any destiny but the one she chooses. So far we’ve had two stories in the realms of Mkalis, and I hope we still have nine hundred and ninety-seven more stories to come.
Second Spear is available from Tordotcom Publishing.
Read an excerpt here.
Martin Cahill is a writer living in Queens who works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He has fiction work forthcoming in 2021 at Serial Box, as well as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fireside Fiction. Martin has also written book reviews and essays for Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble SF&F Blog. Follow him online at @mcflycahill90 and his new Substack newsletter, Weathervane, for thoughts on books, gaming, and other wonderfully nerdy whatnots.
