Liminality - mm vampire romance (EBOOK)

This is a book that has stayed with me for days after I’ve finished reading it. The world building is fabulous, and the characters complex. This is definitely dark, and I’m still mulling over the epilogue ending which is very emotive and final.

I got pulled into this dark world immediately. The descriptions are detailed, and atmospheric. This isn’t a pleasant world especially for those in the dark city who are literally being sold to keep the rich in luxury. The author doesn’t pull punches about the hopelessness of addiction either. The imagery of people queued up ready to take jobs from those who don’t turn up for whatever reason is chilling as is the drudgery of the marshmallow leaf factory. Those in the Dark City are faced with an impossible choice. Smoking so the Kin won’t drink from them, and in doing so dying from what is basically lung cancer, or risk being taken. The city gave me a Victorian London vibe with its layers of society.

I loved Umbra and thought they were in as much of a cage as Elliot, who is doing everything possible to keep his brother, who is the last of his family alive. There is a definitely blurring of good and bad guys here, with some of the humans as bad, if not worse than the Kin. Vermillion is a totally nasty piece of work, and I was very happy with how that part of the plot was resolved. I thought the Abry’s history was interesting, and well thought out, and an interesting parallel to the different classes within the human settlement across the lake. Elliot’s desperation is palatable, and I liked how his and Umbra’s relationship changed from helping each other, to friendship, and then much more. I enjoyed the scenes where they’re teaching each other their different fighting techniques.

The other characters inhabiting this world are interesting too. Dayne, Elliot’s brother has a few secrets of his own, and I liked how the author portrayed the difference in him when he’s craving Kin blood, as opposed to when he’s lucid and well aware of his addiction and feeling the hopelessness of his situation. I liked how Serene doesn’t give up on him despite Dayne’s determination that she won’t be dragged down by him, and her role in helping Elliot.

The plot kept me turning me pages. The action scenes are well written, and I was seriously worried that Elliot wouldn’t survive especially after he is betrayed by someone he thought a friend. I enjoyed the glimpse into their future, but am still in two minds about the last scene, which is haunting me a little—a sure sign of how invested I got in the characters and their story.

5 out of 5 stars.

This book is aptly named: liminal means ‘occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold’ (I asked Google) and the world of the novel is exactly that: a borderlands with a human city sharply divided between haves and have-nots on one side and a Kin castle whose geographic boundaries constantly fluctuate on the other, while in between there’s a lake full of leviathans (really). There are also sentient beasts with mechanical bodies and living wills, a strange, life-giving substance called nectar and a vibrant world of beings with antlers, brightly colored hair, and the ability to take on different gendered characteristics, depending on the blood they drink. To call this a richly developed and intricate world is to undersell it-- it’s vast, complex, and often more dark than light. The human city is run by corrupt elites who sell the blood and lives of the lower-classes for their own use. The border castle is run by a lord desperate for his own legend and set on brutality as the way to cement it. And somehow in this mess human Elliot has to find a way to get his brother, kidnapped by Kin, back, and Embra, sent to the castle to take up a destiny and relationship they decidedly don’t want, has to find a way to make a future they can live with. The odds against them are daunting, and it takes time for Elliot and Umbra to build an alliance, even longer for them to build trust. I loved watching them come together, in spite of the odds, but this didn’t feel to me like primarily a romantic story: instead it’s a romance doing its best to unfold against an overwhelming tide of peril and political upheaval. In a lot of ways, this is really a story about leadership: the people who should lead, the people who shouldn’t, and the immense sacrifices that are sometimes engineered for the greater good. Also, while the lord of the human city and the brutal warlord of the Kin castle are evil, they weren’t, for me, the most harrowing part of the story: that would be the ordinary people who chose to go along, or even to turn against, what was good, and right, and fair for their own interests. I loved this novel, and while the bittersweet nature of some of the pivotal moments broke my heart a little, the story as a whole put it back together. *I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.