Krishna
It is aimed at teenage girls and it shows.
First I thought it was total crap but found that there is a little bit of redemption as you read on. Not much, but it is there if you look for it.
There are four types of necromancers which is all crap and our girl studies in school while animating zombies and bringing them to life or doing all kinds of weird shit. The essay she writes for her necromancer school is total garbage and the language is very suited for the vacuous type of young things that seem to exist in a parallel universe utterly detached from any kind of curiosity or responsibility – especially to learn.
She knows how to raise the zombies but when a pet zombie, Mr Mortimer, tries to eat her, she seems helpless until rescued by an older man who is teaching her zombie-making. Sick. She has a crush on a boy who plays football and seems very shallow. (And says she knows she is shallow but could not care less).
Her uncle is zombified by her mother and used as a servant because ‘he wanted to be useful even after he was dead’. He is a ‘good zombie’ but you know what? She wishes she had known her uncle when he was really her uncle and not a zombie. Are you barfing yet?
Anubis, the God of necromancers, blesses her as the one who has “the gift” and horror or horrors, also talks like a teenage vapehead. She has been, like, chosen and it is, like, so awesome and so cool and so cute and…. You get the picture.
Rick gets to her party and she is insulted by an ex girlfriend of Rick by having punch-bowl thrown in her face. But there is a non human there who kills Rick and Molly, the heroine, seems to be able to catch the pieces of soul when they are about to depart and shove them back into Rick (well, two pieces escape).
She meets her grandparents; she learns she could be an undead reaper and also realizes that Anubis had indeed chosen her. She finally gets to know that her dad is not her biological dad.
She goes to a fancy shmancy school to hone up her reaper skills. Whatevs. (The crazy style, like above, grates). She learns that she is now a reaper and can capture souls to tie them to a SEER machine (which keeps them as slaves against her wishes). Why? Because Irina, her teacher asks her to, and their principal(?) also wants it. Irina cuts a side deal to get diamonds and let the ghost of Aunt Myra go.
When Rick turns up with fetid breath and faints on her room carpet, Molly is thunderstruck. Gets her friends to help.
She discovers that Irina is probably evil and is threatened at gunpoint. She also discovers that Rick is indeed the soul killer who is disposing of students at her school.
The book ends abruptly, Kill Bill style. It sucks. It is one thing to want to write a series but another to finish at a cliffhanger in the hopes that you would buy her second book. I simply imagined that the story ended at a logical point, about 3 pages earlier and am not going to buy the second one.
Not too bad once you get past the crazy style – goes into the ‘barely tolerable’ category.
But by no means a good read.
4/10
– – Krishna