Thank you to TBR & Beyond Tours for the Review Copy! Access the complete tour here!
About the Book:
Before he can be reborn, Zan has spent 499 years bound in a 500-year curse to process souls forthe monstrousFerryman―and if he fails he dies.
In Portland, Bastian is grieving. He survived a car accident that took his mother and impulse-purchased a crumbling bookstore with the life insurance money.
But in sleep, death’s mark keeps dragging Bastian into Zan’s office. It shouldn’t be a problem tolog his soul and forget he ever existed. But when Zan follows Bastian through his memories ofgrief and hope, Zan realizes that he is not ready for Bastian to die.
The boys borrow time hiding in the memories of the dead while the Ferryman hunts them, andZan must decide if he’s willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian―and Bastian mustdecide if he’s willing to keep living if it means losing Zan.
Content Warning: accidental death, grief, survivor’s guilt
MY REVIEW:
As someone who has recently come to appreciate books that are mythology retellings/mythology adjacent, this book hit all the right notes for me. It’s a story set in the modern world with modern problems – and a little bit of mystery. Bastian and Zan are people separated by the thin veil between life and death, and fighting to find themselves (and each other) in the middle.
I loved the was Zan’s part of the story was told, especially – the way he walked through the memories of the dead trying to find bits and pieces of life to continue to live to make it through his sentence, while still doing his job. The Ferryman is dark and sinister, and Zan’s struggle with living with himself and the choice he makes every time someone enters his office is well developed.
Bastian and his friends are trying to figure out how to survive the unthinkable. There has to be a little suspension of disbelief in some of the circumstances, but if the reader is willing to go along with the premise – that Bastian is a broken person who only finds life when he comes face to face with his own impending death and the boy that delivers the message – this is an entertaining read.
The ending, unlike many books, is an honest, heart-wrenching look at life, love, loss, and sacrfice. This is one worth reading!
3.5 Stars.
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Michelle Kulwicki grew up in the Pacific Northwest overturning every rock and stick in anunending quest to find portals to worlds far more exciting than her own. After moving to themountainless Midwest, she earned her bachelors and master’s degrees in music performance,and spent years in the symphony andmusical theater pit circuit. She’s now a mom by day,musician by night, and writer in all the spaces in between—a life that is somewhat lacking inportals, but is still full of magic.Her short fiction has been both Locus Recommended and Hugo nominated, and her first fulllength novel, At the End of the River Styx, is available now.