By Debra A. Kristi
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
I picked up this book because I enjoy a trope filled romantasy where it’s just fun to read and has a good love story, some satisfying spicy scenes and enough fantasy to keep the story interesting and allow the author to stretch their creative muscle. It seems that it’s a challenge for a lot of authors to actually fulfill this assignment. But! Kristi hits all the right notes here.
I picked up the book because of the premise. I like a book with unusual magical beings, so the idea that there are a race of humanoid creatures called ‘reapers’, created by the God of Death to take care of collecting souls, since there are so many souls for just one Grim Reaper. They have specialized magical powers to help with collecting souls, especially since most creatures are very reluctant to give them up, and will use magic and other means to make it difficult and even dangerous.
So, with that background we have our two main characters from rival reaper families, Raven and Chase, assigned to a “not in our world” city that has not allowed a reaper inside for over 100 years. Why is this happening? They don’t know. Why were they chosen, as they are young and still in training. Again, our protagonists have no idea. What they do know is that they don’t like or trust each other, forced to work together to keep each other alive and unveiling secrets about their families, curses and the nature of their existence. Also, they are really attracted to each but ewww, not going there.
So, all of the tropes are right there, so the reader can hold onto them because the storyline is not at all typical. Romantasy writers tend to fall into the same well used plots all the time. Trials of one sort of another, whether its survival games, a series of individual challenges or a thinly disguised game of capture the flag are used often and the reader can assume that the protagonists will somehow come out victorious in one way or the other. Maybe the author tries a high fantasy world wide battle between good and evil. Again, we know good will triumph eventually. Or the protagonists are stuck together on a trek and they have adventures along the way, they will reach their destination at some point. Those plots give the reader a comfort that they are heading towards a happy ending in some way. It’s really up to the skill of the author to make these plots work and I don’t necessarily avoid these plots but it’s getting harder and harder to find something outside of that.
When I find a book that doesn’t have a predictable narrative I get very excited. And that’s how I feel about this book. Once our protagonists reach the afflicted city, I have no idea what is going to happen next. The plot is unpredictable. The side characters have their own motivations. We are introduced to another male protagonist, who is obviously important and is very drawn to our FMC. And she is drawn to him. Is this a love triangle? Or maybe a why choose? But wait, this mysterious new male interest has a complicated history with another female character. Maybe. And the more investigating our main characters do, the more questions pop up. For some readers this may be ultimately frustrating. For myself, as a reader who just wants to be surprised, this overrides any other minor quibble I might have with the writing.
Not that the writing is bad. At first the inner monologue of Raven seemed overly wordy and I wanted to tell the author to put the thesaurus down. I’m not impressed with $5 words when simple words will work just as well. But I don’t know if the author was just trying to create a unique inner voice for Raven’s monologues, but once the story gets moving, the author’s dialogue and action prose flows much easier. I was hooked right into the story as soon as they entered the strange citadel.
Normally I hate slow burns that do not get ‘answered’ in the first book. This is because the author usually doesn’t know what to do with the characters so they make up miscommunication and a lot of inner monologues about how one can’t trust the other enough to work with them. But in this book, our characters are too busy trying to work out the mystery of the city and I will never complain about new plot complications that keep our main characters from dwelling on their attraction for each other.
Overall, this book is an indie book that works. I gave it a solid 4.5 for the storyline and creativity, losing a few marks for overly purple prose in the beginning which had me worried I wouldn’t be able to get into the story, as well as an incredibly slow burn that has me questioning just who the main love interest will be.
