Lord’s story is detailed and complicated and I’m quite sure masterfully written.

But throughout the murder investigation, the characters pause to philosophize over the meaning of life and death and memory, and these frequent side trips left me feeling bored and frustrated. They follow various “threads” to find key people to spy on, which relates to the “unraveling” of the title. Along with Chance’s brother the Trickster, a man who can turn into a spider, Miranda is taken on a journey through time and memory as she travels through the maze, a construct that allows one to jump off at different points on the timeline. Chance wants Miranda to help him solve a mysterious string of murders, which Miranda does with very little resistance, I was surprised to see. Our main character is a lawyer named Miranda Ecouvo who is snatched away from death by one of the undying, or immortals, a man named Chance. Unraveling is a dreamy, almost stream of consciousness tale that really begs for a second reading in order to grasp all its complex parts.

This is one of those rare reviews where I’m not even going to recap the story, because honestly, I’m not sure I understood what was going on enough to do so. Readers who need a solid plot to follow are probably going to struggle with this as well, since it’s more of a story of ideas than action. I’m wondering if I might have connected more to the story if I’d read that first, because unfortunately, I really struggled with this book. This is my first Karen Lord book, and I found out after I finished it that it’s actually set in the same world as Redemption in Indigo. The nitty-gritty: A story with a fascinating premise that is heavy on philosophical musings, this one just didn’t work for me.

This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord