Because we love to see people who challenge death.
Song Vibe Check:
"Young and Reckless" By: Charlotte Lawrence
"the lakes (the long pond session)" By: Taylor Swift
"Don't leave yet" By: Eric Nam
After reading The Atlas Six and The Atlas Paradox, I realized that I needed to make my way through all her work because as pretentious and elegant her writing is for this book series, I always see an abundance of posts dedicated to her work. In the end, I still have mixed feelings about her writing style. Sometimes, I like it. Sometimes it frustrates me that every time I read her work, it feels as if nothing and yet everything happens at the same time, as if she made all her readers go through a weird time bubble where time moves differently in her work. So, to save some money, I put Masters of Death and Alone with you in the ether on hold and now that I own both of those books (temporarily), I'll dive into Masters of Death first.
Here we go.
Short Summary: Seven people end up intertwined in the godly game where everyone has something to lose that involves a life changing prize: whoever wins can control Death himself.
I swear that's the best one sentence pitch I can come up with. The truth is a lot more complicated.
Long Summary: Viola Marek is a struggling real estate agent, and a vampire. But her biggest problem currently is that the house she needs to sell is haunted. The ghost haunting the house has been murdered, and until he can solve the mystery of how he died, he refuses to move on. Fox D’Mora is a medium, and though is also most-definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses—seeing as he’s actually the godson of Death.
When Viola seeks out Fox to help her with her ghost-infested mansion, he becomes inextricably involved in a quest that neither he nor Vi expects (or wants). But with the help of an unruly poltergeist, a demonic personal trainer, a sharp-voiced angel, a love-stricken reaper, and a few high-functioning creatures, Vi and Fox soon discover the difference between a mysterious lost love and an annoying dead body isn’t nearly as distinct as they thought.
Now....this book is not the type of book you read and expect it to be something simple and straightforward because it's actually very complex. It's the book that leads you to think, about death, about life, about our own mortality and sure, existential thoughts may ensue from this, but there is a lot of beautiful quotes scattered throughout this book that sometimes leave you, as the reader, speechless. The book starts out relatively slow as you get to meet the characters, how they got there, the ties between the core seven that we follow and from there, we get to the middle of the book where it feels like all the crazy conversations we have in our mind where multiple thoughts come to mind.
To all my ADHD readers, yes the style in how the book gets written at that part is very relatable to our way of thinking (I'm saying this as someone who always has multiple thoughts in her mind and can never settle on one thing to do, but to do everything at once!)
So, as a result, I did have to put this book down a couple of times. Because we deal with six very interesting characters:
Violet (AKA the vampire/aswagi): Vampire by day, cat by night, our real estate agent is trying to sell a house that is being haunted by...
Tom Parker the fourth (AKA the annoying poltergeist who's a fat mood): He got stabbed, but has no idea how or who did it and is now tethered to the house he does not want to get sold by Violet. As she's the only one who can see him, he decides to make it his un-dead career to annoy her (and the visitors of the house at all costs!)
Isis (AKA the chaos stirrer): A demon personal trainer and Violet's unofficial friend from Creatures anonymous group they attend, she's snarky, she's the sort of person to thrive on misery and chaos.
Mayra(AKA the not quite saint): An angel who doesn't actually want to be an angel is stuck doing assignments for the actually corrupt archangels, Raphael and Gabriel and harbors love for...
Cal(Death's messenger): Who is serious, but also kinda awkward and is hopelessly in love with Mayra, who he can't actually be with because they're from the opposite sides (life and death and some rules, I guess.)
Fox D'Mora(AKA "The Medium"scammer): Death's grandson who fell in love with a thief who dumped him.
Brandt Solberg(AKA The Immortal thief): Said thief who stole much more than the heart of Death's godson.
The easy way to explain this book is that every character deals with some repressed desire they want to accomplish. Whether that's to be free from a curse, to be with someone you can't be with, or to fight the fact that you may be falling for a ghost, or reuniting with the guy that broke your heart, all of the characters contend with their regrets, the choices they will have to make and while all that is supposed to be interesting, the problem with this book is that...
The plot of the book actually starts in the middle of the book. Like over 150 pages in to discover that there is a game that the immortals play where you don't lose and you do everything to win.
I would have liked to have known this sooner instead of nearly giving up on how convoluted the plot gets and for no reason. Like, if I am to pitch this book to someone in front of me, I will literally ask to see the end papers which illustrate our characters and just explain their relationships and who wins at the end. Because everything in this book, can, in a way be explained by those end papers which seems like the luring trap for you to read and then get bamboozled by the complexity, the philosophy and all the existential thoughts lurking in your head long after the time you should be sleeping.
It's an interesting book for sure... but it might not be everyone's cup of tea. Some will like the deep thinking, some will like the mentions of death and the philosophy of death (which is why I continued reading this book instead of dropping it) and some might just be here for the repressed desire and angst that this book practically screams with. It's... an alright book which is both poetic and has some unnecessary bits that only felt like filler content instead of getting into the heart of the plot.
Frankly, I still like to believe in my head that this was written on a few brain cells at midnight while chugging a bunch of coffee (or red bulls!).
Overall: 3.5/5 stars
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