BLOOD DIVIDED

Star-crossed lovers rekindle their relationship from a previous life while struggling to bridge society’s ethnic divide in Keridan’s romantic fantasy novel.

The second installment of the author’s Felserpent Chronicles series follows the budding romance between Sebastian Sayre and Kyra Valorian. He’s a Daeval, living in the realm of Nocens as a professional assassin who can magically teleport and emit flames; she is an Astral, living in the neighboring realm of Aeles, who can magically heal people and resurrect the dead. Standing between them is the bigotry of the Astrals, who regard their golden blood as so superior to the Daevals’ silver blood that they have a Blood Alarm to keep Daevals out. The antagonism is personal for Kyra and Sebastian—as a child, the latter was imprisoned in the secret Astral laboratory at Rynstyn and subjected to torturous medical experiments in which Kyra’s father may have participated. Drawing them together are their bracelets, which enable them to communicate telepathically, and their memories of being King Schatten and Queen Kareth, rulers of the united realm of Aeles-Nocens 1,000 years ago. Sebastian and Kyra set about several tasks, including bringing the shade of Sebastian’s mother, Grace, who was murdered by his abusive father, Malum, out of the land of the dead; wiping out Rynstyn; and attempting to reunite the realms. Meanwhile, they navigate their awkward, yearning relationship: Kyra prods the taciturn Sebastian to express his feelings; Sebastian seethes with jealousy when Kyra talks to other men; they sleep together in Sebastian’s well-appointed cave, but chastely. Keridan presents a vivid, teeming fantasy world in which wizardry is ubiquitous and everyone has a talking animal to provide telepathic advice (Kyra’s is a lynx named Aurelius, Sebastian’s is a bat named Batty). Her narrative features sharply etched characters, a chilling portrait of social prejudice, and powerful, emotionally fraught prose (“Sebastian screamed as he ran forward, just as his father drove the blade into his mother’s chest. ‘You should have stayed mine, Grace,’ Malum said quietly, wrenching the knife free. ‘If you don’t belong to me, I have no use for you’ ”). The result is a complex, captivating yarn.

An imaginative sword-and-sorcery tale with a winsome love story at its heart.