A bit mysterious, is a he a rogue, or is he a charmer? Both of them are outcasts and you can't help but feel invested in and protective of them.Īfter their arrival in Japan, they meet a man named Hiro. Even though Ren feels out of place due to being mixed-race, Neven also feels out of place due to his general personality. I immediately felt attached to Ren and Neven. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Rebecca Yeo, completely drew me into the story. She must find and eliminate three extremely dangerous Yokai demons, each one more frightening than the last. In order to try to gain acceptance at last, Ren takes on a difficult quest from the Goddess of Death. It's so frustrating! She's out of place no matter where she goes. Their destination: Japan, where Ren hopes she can learn more about her Mother and her Shinigami roots.Īrriving in Japan, Ren discovers she isn't necessarily accepted there either. A sacrifice he is more than willing to make for the sister he loves. Sacrificing the life he has known for a very unknown future.
Now she needs to flee to save herself.Īgainst her better judgement, Neven insists on going with her. When Ren has an altercation with some fellow Reapers who are bullying her, yet again, her Shinigami powers come through in a way she shouldn't have let them. Even though she has been collecting souls from the London streets for over two centuries, she nevertheless feels like an outcast among the Reapers.ĭue to her mixed-race status as half-British Reaper, half-Japanese Shinigami, Ren has been treated very poorly by others in London.īecause of this, the only person she has ever felt really connected to is her half-brother, Neven. Ren Scarborough has always felt like an outsider. I understand this new guy she’s instantly attracted to also represents the acceptance she badly craves, but this is a predictable setup where a character makes a stupid decision to get something they thought they wanted, then pay the consequences later and have to learn what they *truly* want, etc. I’m also not a fan of characters making unintelligent decisions for the sake of conflict and character development, especially when in this case the protagonist prioritizes a handsome love interest she just met over her brother who she’s loved and known for centuries. Why would a group of mean girls sacrifice so much for the sake of being petty? There were no implications of a deep-seated grudge other than them being racist against her for being biracial (again, we don’t understand why people hate biracial identities so much in this fantasy world). Or how a group of Reapers decide to slow down time to torture the protagonist, but it gets revealed later that manipulating time means taking years off your own life. There are other world-building things that don’t make sense either, like how the protagonist crawled through a ventilation tunnel above a group of Reapers in order to escape, but it gets revealed later that Reapers have incredible hearing and can even hear heartbeats from far away. The stigma and shame of being biracial is such a big part of the protagonist’s angst to the point where she makes some very bad and dumb decisions for the sake of her character arc - I wish this had been developed better, especially if the author wanted to parallel to racism in the real world. I would understand if there were political conflicts between England VS Japan or racial tension between those two groups, but those don’t get mentioned at all. While it’s clear that the author writes from her own experience with being biracial, the discrimination against the protagonist doesn’t have a clear reason that makes sense within this fantasy world. Why are Reapers only white people? Why is having black hair only associated with Asians? Why does it seem like the main character is the *only* mixed Reaper to ever exist in this book, considering that Reapers live for centuries of years and would have surely reproduced with different races by now? And why is being mixed looked down upon in this society? (There was a throwaway line about how Reapers are more archaic *because* they have lived for so long, but this still feels like a stretch.) The world-building feels incomplete and not fully thought out, especially when it deals with race. I was eager to rate this 4 stars, but as I kept reading, I found too many issues that dropped it down to 3. Seeing the different yokai that the protagonist has to face throughout the book was fun as well! Really enjoyed the descriptive writing, dark atmosphere, and concept of Reapers, especially with how they can "manipulate" time and all the imagery that comes with using those powers.
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