The pages of fiction open up to transport the fictional character as he tries to save his lady love and Death, the Grim Reaper, tries to prevent a coup and the takeover of his realm.

Fun, easy read. Stretched my imagination and my knowledge of literature. Read-in-order recommended. ( )

So... I am trying to make it through this book but I really don't like Satan as a character so I am going to stop reading this book. When I requested the book for review I didn't realize that he would be a main story component and I don't like to read about Satan before I sleep (which is when I have time to read). The story seems interesting and I will try to pick it up again as its an issue on my end and not the author's but for now I'm putting this into my huge TBR pile. Sorry and thanks for the review opportunity.

Received book from LT member giveaway program.

A twist of the afterlife that is humorous, fun, full of action, fast paced, and a very enjoyable read. The plot is unique, the characters are well developed, and the book is hard to put down. Full of twists and turns with a good ending. I highly recommend this book unless you are offended by the existence of the devil and satan. ( )

This whole book is a comment on political correctness and its problems. I loved it! The story had elements from Aladdin, MacBeth, Robin Hood, Dracula and Don Quixote. It was definitely entertaining! ( )

I won a free ebook copy of this book from the author through LibraryThing.

I wish to make the point that I didn’t finish this book due to the reasons I will list below.

The beginning of this book gripped me. I loved the premise of Death being a real character, not one that followed the lines of Terry Pratchett’s –Death- (which many authors have attempted but failed), or make him too kooky so that not only is he not believable as being a possible Death, but also as a character themselves. I enjoyed how Death was, one of quick quips who battles out agains the main –evil- by making life extremely evil for them face to face and in the background. The scenes of the evil character raging over Death’s latest –idea- of how to make life unbearable for them was extremely funny.

I also liked the –friendly- companion of Satan, who likes to –pop in- to have chats with Death. Satan kept his nasty demeanor through-out, but had an interesting side to his personality where his cheeky personality keeps him a favourite, and for ever scene he was in, except when Death was in there with him (and then both of them), he completely stole it.

Unfortunately, none of this could really be described of any of the other characters. I enjoyed the –secretary- of Death, but she only really worked when she was bouncing off Death. For the other instances of being around other characters, she fell flat and lost anything that made her different from anyone else. Half-way through the book, she goes off on her own adventure with one of the most two dimensional characters in the book and the latter devolves into a whining, pathetic man who couldn’t regain any of my previous slight sympathy for him from the events that had happened to him earlier in the book.

The evil character within this book slightly saves the story. She appears to be a reactionary -bad guy-, who stumbles along because she has this great big idea (quite a bit like some politicians and others on the internet) but gets too easily halted when someone else applies logic to it in order to thwart her. It made her interesting, especially since she is in a lot of scenes with Death who quickly figures out how to handle her. And if he isn't sure, then there are others who can give him -potential- problems to lay before her feet.

I think that this might be one of the problems I had with the book, it splits into three, with the secretary and the author off in one area, Death and Satan bumping into each other as the former battles it out with the –evil- one, and then the third of a character who doesn’t exist and various names that any reader will know by their own search through the literary world. It is attempting to do a similar kind of story where three journeys are running concurrent with each other and I only enjoyed Death’s timeline. I lost patience with the other ones, especially in the case of the made-up character since his walking through the books, and meeting up with the various men and women within it didn’t ring true.

The actual –way- these ones should speak, how they should act fell into the wayside simply to keep the plot going. What little that would differentiate them became more modern slang, and all of a sudden a character will have knowledge that anyone who has read their –real- story, shouldn’t know. I could forgive a bit of this, as trying to keep to some of the language is difficult enough to read, not to mention actually writing it, but these characters became more and more believable as they continued on.

This part of the book just did not work for me and by the half-way point I had had enough and had to give up reading any further. This book read as though the author had done his second revision of this story, managed to catch up many of what he had written before and inserted them into the plot but hadn’t gotten there quite yet. Maybe if it was reviewed a little bit, some of the characters were either over-hauled (such as the secretary as she has such potential), while others are dropped, such as the one who goes off on a journey with the latter.

I wish good luck to the author and hope that he continues writing. He has great potential, the entire premise of this book more than proves this, but I think that this book might have needed more revision.
Catkin ( )