The world is torn by a series of strange and random
events. Matt, leader of the Golden Reapers, has been tasked to investigate this
– and it may all be linked to the strange woman who visited him and vanished
without a trace.
Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with this book,
starting almost from the beginning which didn’t bode well for my finishing it
and, alas, I didn’t
We begin with our two main characters – Matt and Eli –
being transported randomly and for unexplained reasons to each other in a
dream. The following 15% of the book describes how hot they find each other.
That’s pretty much it. We have Eli briefly exploring her
new surroundings, then seeing Matt and then DUMP page after page after page of
how sexy the other looks/sounds/smells. It just goes on and on and on and on
and includes such gems of Matt deciding to call this complete stranger “kitten”
and betting he could “make her pussy purr” and saying she has a “pretty
collarbone” and how close she was to “making his dick blow”. Apparently by just
standing their throwing out sex scent. Dare I say that sounds rather…
premature? Throw in him grabbing her and not letting her go even as she said “no”,
only thinking better of it when he outright asks her if she’s a virgin; all in
all we have a really unpleasant scene. This was continued when they woke up and
Eli described how wet she was.
Well, I knew nothing about Eli’s job, what she did or why
or where she was or what mattered to her – but I knew she’s just woken up wet
and sticky. I have to say, it’s not in my top 10 most favourite introduction to
a character.
I nearly stopped there, but I held on and we started into
Eli’s life working to make ends meet (interjected with random inserts of Matt’s
hotness) and on to Matt who proceeded to have a series of really really clumsy
monologues (with random inserts of Eli’s hotness).
The writings style is rambling, confused and reads like a
stream of consciousness exercise. I think the book has tried to capture someone’s
thoughts without any edit, as if someone just sat and babbled every thought
that came into their head – it’s lost, hard to read, full of distracting asides
and not very fun. Every now and then the narrative is broken by random
expletives (Eli also likes to throw in random “Ugh!” in her narrative) –
usually in threes on and separate lines. In fact that happens a lot – something
will happen then they’ll curse (or this supernatural general of the Reaper army
will invoke the name of Christ when they’ve already rambled on about the “Holy
Basilisk” which is just shoddy world building) then next line curse again,
then, next line, another rambling expletive.
They both also have a very immature voice which seems odd
for their ages – both apparent and in reality. Matt in particular sounds like a
petulant and angry teenager, not a commander of a supernatural army. It all
draws out the narrative, makes everything clumsy and the characters entirely unbelievable
as reasonable, let alone capable, adults.
At 60% I still didn’t really know anything. There were
mermaids but I didn’t know more than they existed. There are Reapers and they
collects souls – but why and what for I don’t know. There’s “Alchemy” which seems
to just mean “magic”. I don’t know what the Reapers are or what they do or what
these Metallus are (civilian Reapers?) I don’t know why the Reapers are
soldiers or what they fight or protect against. The Reapers come in silver,
gold and bronze versions but I’m not sure why, or what the demarcation of clans
are. I don’t know what the Basilisk actually is (a deity I think) or what the
creed is or who various people were – but there was a huge list of them. I’ve
had a lot of facts dropped on me, but no real explanation of what they mean or
the relevance of any of these words or this information. So despite all the
really painful and clumsy worldbuilding, I didn’t actually learn anything, which
was immensely frustrating
And then Eli magically teleported to Matt’s bed and started to describe, at length, again how sexy he was including his thigh-clenchingly sexy bedhead and I gave up. I was not going to deal with yet another ramble of purring pussies and sexy collarbones.
Under the stream-of-conscious writing, the rather
immature thought processes and confusing world building was there any potential
to this book? I honestly don’t know – because after reading up to 60% in, there
was so little of substance imparted that I couldn’t really grasp or appreciate
anything.
