Finder
A Novel of the Borderlands
Emma Bull
Tor
Fiction, YA Fantasy
Themes: Alternate Earths, Faeries, Plagues, Urban Tales, Werewolves
****
Description
Bordertown stands between the mundane world and the recently-returned magical world. Humans, halfbloods, and full Trueblood elves come to Bordertown when they don't
fit in anywhere else... and when they don't have a choice. Here, magic and technology exist in a peculiar balance, but the rules of urban survival are still the same.
It is here that the human Orient, gifted - or cursed - with the power to find almost anything people want found, has made a new home.
A dark new drug threatens Bordertown. It promises to turn humans into Trueblood elves, thus allowing them to cross the border into the untold wonders of the magical
world... only nobody has ever survived long enough for it to work. It is spreading like wildfire among humans despite the death-toll, and is triggering some serious
problems in the delicate racial balance of Bordertown in its wake. Teaming up with tough girl Sunny Rico, Orient soon finds himself searching for the one thing he never
wanted to find: a killer.
Review
This was a well-written urban fantasy in what is evidently a "shared world" (one used by multiple authors), a little off the beaten path. I didn’t feel that I’d read about these same characters in slightly different guises before, as sometimes happens in fantasy works. It's a gritty, imperfect world full of flawed people, and Orient himself is no pristine angel, though he ultimately is trying to do the right thing. Enough is hinted at here that I wonder if the author has plans for more books, though I haven't yet seen any sign of them.