Riley is at the ultimate low. After leaving pharmacy school with mountains of debt, he accepts a minimum wage job as a glorified shelf stocker in a small Virginia town. He can’t pay his student loans, rent, or afford much food. And his biggest setback: getting shot and killed during a standoff with police.
But unlike most deaths, this one comes with a job offer and an opportunity to turn his life around.
After two-thousand years working as the Angel of Death, Azrael is out of touch with humanity. He needs a replacement—and has his eye on Riley—who hesitantly agrees. The transition goes anything but smoothly; Azrael rushes through training then leaves without warning. Riley is uncertain about his new job responsibilities and mistakenly kills a demon—who retaliates on the mortals. Now lives are at stake, souls kidnapped… and fate lies within the hands of a rookie. - from Booksirens.com
Thanks to Booksirens and the author for allowing me a copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.
The story synopsis for this one caught my eye. It reminded me of Piers Anthony's On A Pale Horse, and so I had to check it out. The story started out well, giving us a good setting for the MC, and how he ended up to where we are in current story-time. There is brief mention at the start about Death itself, but there are a couple small sections that reveal him, leading up to the replacement. Now the whole idea of Death needing a replacement, due to being 'out of touch with humanity' leaves me scoffing a bit, but for story purposes, I was content.
From this point, the story is nothing more than one philosophical idea of how the"job" of Death should be done. Obviously, a rookie thrown into the position without much instruction is going to screw things up, and that does happen. Demon-type dogs are our anti-heroes, and there are several confrontations between our rookie of Death and the canines. Our MC is constantly remionding the readers about his viewpoints, in fact, for me it got a bit repetitive. I started to skim pages rather than read them.
Overall, it was not a bad read. The idea of a new Death in training is not a new one, though this one had a a little different version. I liked a little of the twist at the end regarding who holds Death as title (no spoiler). I was a bit not happy about the seemingly (to me) repetitive philosophy (-ies) that seemed that the MC had to share constantly.
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