ASTERIA

In Leigh’s debut fantasy novel, a motley cast of characters struggles to survive a baffling world of immortals and dragons.

Although Jaime appears to be a relatively normal high school basketball star, he spent 47 years in another dimension—the world of Asteria—before returning home to Kansas, where just a few days had passed. His second trip through the Asteria portal includes his female schoolmate Conor, who happens to be with Jaime at that time, as an unwitting travel companion. They enter a labyrinthine world of assorted cities and kingdoms, some buried and others invisible. Elsewhere in Asteria is Evangeline, a skilled orphaned hunter who cares for her younger twin brothers. She leads four others on a crucial hunt—starvation is a distinct possibility if they don’t return with food. The group has a run-in with Turpins, a reputedly cursed race of immortals who demand that Evangeline come with them. Skyye is the young queen of a floating kingdom, but she has no real power—which doesn’t stop older men from committing atrocities in her name. Effectively a prisoner, she may be able to escape her kingdom with help from a guard, but she isn’t sure what his agenda truly is or if her beloved handmaiden will join her; she also wonders when she’ll finally be able to ride her very own dragon. Somewhere in an underwater city, the thief Azra aims to steal a book of magic. He meets the enigmatic warrior Salara, a woman who can guide him in uncovering a bevy of secrets, including a way to leave the submerged city for the upper realms.

Leigh’s complicated novel can sometimes be disorienting. The story unfolds via five narrative perspectives, which, for much of the book, feel like four entirely separate plotlines (narrators Jaime and Conor essentially share a story). While the transitions between the points of view are smooth (with chapter titles designating each narrator), the numerous story threads can cause confusion as the characters intentionally withhold information (even from readers), thereby setting up a cornucopia of secrets to be revealed in the novel’s latter half. On the plus side, this approach generates characters who, because they’re so mysterious, continually fascinate—like Jaime, who harbors a murky past and has trouble readjusting to life as a 17-year-old jock following nearly half a century in Asteria. Evangeline, Skyye, and Azra are each understandably torn between trusting specific people and fleeing from them; in Evangeline’s case, Miah, a Turpin, kidnaps her, but he doesn’t seem inherently evil. The four storylines don’t intersect for quite some time, although they clearly unspool in the same land. Asteria itself is perplexing (“I don’t understand this place,” Conor tells Jaime, who assures her that “no one does”). Even when one character clarifies Asteria’s essence, more questions arise that the story doesn’t answer. Still, the characters’ unpredictability makes for a white-knuckled read, as do the intermittent creature encounters, like clashes with the hairless, skeletally limbed fexes, which launch themselves into the air to attack. Leigh surely has a sequel or two planned, since numerous plot threads are left dangling at the novel’s end.

This epic story of an otherworldly place revels in its dizzying plot turns and exuberant complexity.