Asunder by Jodi Meadows
Read a full summary of Asunder by Jodi Meadows below. If you can’t remember what happened in Asunder and you need a refresher, then you’re in the right place.
what happened in Asunder?
- Ana and Sam travel to Purple Rose Cottage. ANa’s flute playing attracts sylph, which dance and then leave. They meet Cris (of purple rose fame). Like butterflies in Incarnate, Blue roses are the symbol of Asunder: they are a beautiful thing made and misunderstood, ridiculed for not being what everyone expected, and no one can recognize the value of them.
- Ana and Sam travel to Menehem’s lab and go through his research. Menehem had experimented on sylph; after a successful experiment where he stunned them, and was taking their vitals when they almost killed him but decided not to, then fled. The notes reveal that Menehem had to gradually up the dosage as the sylph became resistant. This is the same chemical he used on Janan at Templedark, and using it again would require an exponential increase to affect Janan again.
- The mystery of sylph really bothers Ana; she doesn’t want to hurt them, doesn’t understand why they respond to music and to her particularly.
- Ana suspects that all of the reincarnated souls have had their memories sealed by Janan in order to hide something.
- Ana believes that she is not capable of love, to the point that she has an emotional breakdown when Sam tells her he loves her. She’s also experiencing real friendship for the first time.
- Two newsouls are born in Heart. People get angry and blame Ana, who is worried because newsouls are so reviled. She worries that no one will protect them when they’re threatened.
- Sylph attack and Ana is somehow able to calm them with music. People suspect her of being evil.
- Ana returns to the Temple and meets Meuric, who is not dead but very maimed, and forces him to explain what will happen on Soul Night. Meuric explains that Janan wanted to achieve immortality like the phoenixes. On Soul Night, Janan will rise. He teaches her the meaning of some of the symbols from the books she took from the Temple in Incarnate.
- Meuric also reveals that Janan eats the newsouls, gaining strength from the lives he will not allow them to live. Ana asks about sylph and he scoffs that they are cursed. Ana leaves the Temple and a man steals the key to the Temple.
- Ana gathers a group of friends who are newsoul sympathists. She asks them to talk to pregnant women and engage them in discussion about newsoul rights and protection. After the meeting, there’s an explosion at the home of a pregnant woman. Several more occur.
- Sam and Ana’s home is broken into and every instrument is destroyed. Sam is heartbroken. Ana’s Temple books and Menehem’s research are also stolen.
- Fun fact: Sam has been killed by dragons 30 times. This seems significant but we don’t know WHY. Could it play into the last book?
how did it end?
- Ana is captured by Deborl, the father of a newsoul is revealed as a traitor, and Ana is thrown into the Temple. Stef and Cris are also there, having been captured before.
- Ana, Stef and Cris find a room full of bodies chained to an altar. One man (Janan) lays preserved on the altar, surrounded by the skeletal remains of the souls that are being reincarnated. Ana and Cris remember that Janan was their leader.
- Ana realizes she and the other Newsouls will definitely not be reincarnated
- Janan speaks to them and traps them in the room. Ana and Stef argue – Ana tells Stef she knows Stef loves Sam, Stef snaps back that Ana will die and she will still be there when the butterfly is dead.
- Janan wanted to be immortal – no death and rebirth. He had discovered the secret, but was imprisoned by the jealous phoenixes in towers surrounded by walls (the walls Cris and Sam have remembered and forgotten). Janan told them he needed to stay in the tower to achieve immortality and told them to wait for him. He shed his immortality and became part of the walls.
- Cris and Stef remember that all of the reincarnated souls agreed to be reincarnated. Janan told them he would gain knowledge and power to protect them when he returned if they bound themselves to him. They understood about Janan eating newsouls but because of all the scary creatures in the world, they agreed anyway. Ana is disappointed in Sam and her friends.
- Cris completes the ritual to shed his body and become part of the temple like Janan so he can open a door to the outside and let Ana and Stef escape. Since he doesn’t have souls bound to him, he won’t consume newsouls and will sacrifice himself forever.
- Ana and Stef escape the Temple and reunite with Sam just as sylph attack the city. Ana realizes that sylph are the unborn souls consumed by Janan, of whom Cris is now one.
- The Council puts Ana on trial for hiding Menehem’s research, lying about it, killing Meuric, lying about it, and hiding the books she took from the Temple.
- Because Janan keeps wiping their memories, the Council cannot remember that Cris is a sylph or that Janan eats newsouls, so Ana cannot defend herself. She is exiled from Heart.
- Sam agrees to go with Ana to find the sylph. Sam reveals that he turned on the machine in Menehem’s lab that made the poison to stall Janan and that’s where they decide to go.
anything else
Newsoul – someone newly born, living their first life
Templedark – the night that Menehem poisoned Janan when 73 souls died and will not be reincarnated
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