A Flickering Remnant

5⭐️ 2🌶

I finished my eARC of A Flickering Remnant by LJ Generous last night.  I stayed up too late reading it, but it was worth it.  I know I say this about a lot of the ARCs I read but I really really loved this one.  It was so different from everything else I read.  The world building is amazing.  The author creates a huge complex world with two realms and multiple regions effortlessly.  The contrast between, Oriana, the living realm above and Iswyn, the undead world below, is really unique.  Oriana is, by all accounts, modern with cell phones, cars and city scapes.  Iswyn is Gothic feeling because the curse has prevented technology from developing.  I talked a little about this book in my last post.  Eleni wakes from a traumatic birth experience with years of her memory just gone.  She has only her best friend as a support structure.  Eleni struggles raising her daughter alone.  She's desperate to find answers to her missing time.  Eleni is a witch and she does know that.  She's living in a part of Oriana where humans reside, where her magic doesn't work.  After a very vivid dream of a pond in the woods Eleni, her best friend Alora and Mae, Eleni's daughter make the drive to the hiking trail that leads to the pond in the woods.  Eleni and Mae go ahead down the trail.  When they get there they're caught in a downpour then approached by a woman, Glennis, who claimes to be Eleni's mother.  Except Eleni remembers both her parents dying in a car crash years ago.  A witch emerges from the pond, then floats above it.  Glennis tells Eleni that this witch, The Mother, is there for repayment of the bargain and Eleni won't be able to escape her.  Glennis takes Mae from Eleni's arms then moves out of reach.  Eleni, of course, fights this but The Mother pulls her through the air.  They fall back through the pond which is the portal that connects Oriana to Iswyn.  As soon as they reach the ground of Iswyn a group of people surround them.  Eleni is injected with something that stops her heart.  She's told that's the only way she can remain in Iswyn for any length of time.  The High Reaper is among this group of people.  He has The Mother taken away as he had not sactioned her retreiving Eleni from Oriana.  This group of people he refers to as The Kin all know Eleni but she has no memory of any of them.  The Reaper isn't very forthcoming with information.  Eleni does overhear him taking, he says that they have to be careful with her.  If they force her memories back too quickly it could kill her.  He keeps his distance right at first but sets Eleni up with a training schedule with two of the Kin.  Training her body, her magic (which works in Iswyn) and sessions with him to pull her memories back out slowly.  

The book is broken into three sections.  Each one a facet of who she believes she is until she remembers another piece.  Over some time she, with the magic of the Reaper, starts remembering her true memories of her childhood and her time in Iswyn the first time.  The whole time though she has to work through being parted from Mae and the feral need to get back to her immediately.  

This was such a powerful story.  It was so unique and the twists and reveals of information were spot on.  I figured most of it out before it was confirmed, but not all of it.  There are multiple factions working against eachother and a ton of political stuff going on.  Basically no one is who they seem to be.  This is a sloooow slow burn.  The spice doesn't hit til the very end of the book.  But it was really good.  The end is a cliffhanger and the epilogue had me screaming.  There is so much more going on than we know.  This is going to be a trilogy and I don't know when the next book is coming out.  Whenever it is, is not soon enough.  This was also the debut novel for this author, which floors me.  This was so well written.  I absolutely loved it.  It comes out March 10th.  Go check it out.