Masters of Death by Olivie Blake
*some of the bones are traced
I finished this book in February of last year, and I’ve been struggling to put my thoughts about it into any sort of coherent string. This, I believe, is Olivie Blake’s second ever published book, and I have another of her series ready to go on my list, regardless of how I felt about Masters of Death.
Maybe I started this, review? collection of my thoughts post read? wrong. Masters of Death appealed to me honestly, because of how gorgeous the cover was. The green contrasting with the purple, and the skelly tightrope? I don’t know, it was so pretty I couldn’t not read it (don’t judge a book by its cover went over my head…). Let’s just say, lesson learned. Death starts us off as the narrator, and he begins to tell us the story of how he was tricked into becoming a father. Death being the narrator is something I should’ve kept in the forefront of my brain while reading, but I let that slip past me and it likely affected how I felt about the rest of the book.
Other novels I’d read that were narrated by unreliable narrators, well it felt like the unreliable narrator was at least convincingly voicing the other characters. Here, the idea that Death was telling the story quickly got lost on me once he was no longer involved in the narrative in a physical sense.
Death tells us about his mortal godson Fox, who he adopted and never reaped, making him more or less immortal and ageless. We then shift our narrative to meet Viola Marek, a newish vampire, more precisely an aswang. She shapeshifts into a cat at night, and is a struggling real estate agent who has to sell a house haunted by Tom Parker IV, a ghost only she can see in modern day Chicago. We have a whole ensemble to get through encountering Mayra (angel), Calix (reaper), Isis (demon), Brandt (demigod), and a slew of other creatures who accompany Viola and Fox to save death, save the ghost, and end some sort of serious stakes cosmic gambling.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Tom has been terrorizing Vi during her open houses, and really any time he sees her, so she resolves to get rid of him to move her career along. Viola meets Isis at what is essentially a support group for other creatures in the Chicago area, who then encourages Viola to seek out Fox D’Mora’s help with her ghost. Fox, still alive and young as ever, has been advertising as a medium that can see and help with the dead, and is often in the company of Calix and Mayra. Upon realizing that Vi and Isis are creatures, he refuses to help and has to be strong armed by Mayra and Calix to even take a look at the house and aforementioned ghost.
What Blake does extremely well while this coming together of her characters takes place is weave in their backstory, as well as the rules of the universe she’s crafted. The archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, keep the balance between all other religious deities! Each religion’s way of life and death is real, with the archangels only stepping in to offer the recently deceased a job to be able to move on to paradise, instead of their faith’s underworld. This worldview really drew me in, it’s such an interesting and bureaucratic way to look at the after-life. We also get a taste of how world shattering the end of Fox and Brandt’s relationship was.
I don’t want to spoil the entire middle and end of the novel, but what I will say is that the ending threw me for a loop. Not because it wasn’t satisfying or because it didn’t make sense, but more so because Death, our narrator, suddenly becomes every voice towards the end. Blake closes out her book with Death wishing us farewell, and it is only then that I realize that Death is the one who was speaking to us this whole time, relaying the tales of his son and how his life finally moves forward. In this regard, the ending felt rushed, and a bit like Death wanted to wrap up everything in a bow. I loved the structure, the sass from each character, and especially Fox and Brandt. Blake’s worldbuilding was intriguing, and brought forth the kind of after-life I think we all dream of, one where we all have a place with our gods. All in all, 6.5/10!
