Jamieson, Trent -- Death Most Definite

I liked Roil's scenery but thought it was lacking in the plot department. This book starts out with lots of plot, but it takes half the book for the scenery to get interesting.

The protagonist (I'm sure he had a name) works for MortMax Australia, which is to say he's a junior associate Grim Reaper. It's a hereditary talent, but the business is corporate these days. Boring; pays well. Then somebody tries to shoot him in the head, he starts seeing dead people who aren't clients, and there's a zombie outbreak.

Okay, to be fair, not zombies. Revenants. They don't bite and they don't care about brains; they just suck the life out of anything nearby. Part of Steven's job (sorry, name's on the front cover, I checked) is to deal with them. Unfortunately, with his colleagues rapidly getting mown down, Steven is becoming outnumbered.

Anyhow, the story starts with a lot of running around Brisbane and screaming, which is fine for the momentum but not all that interesting. Presenting Death as boring and corporate is an interesting idea, but in practice... er... boring? Perhaps an inevitable flaw.

The author has a fondness for what you might call "realistic grit" -- not in terms of dead-eyed combat veterans, but of white-collar office workers (of death) who go out and drink too much, then have horrible puking hangovers the next morning. Also, there's a spell which requires semen as an ingredient. It's less erotic than it sounds. Maybe he's just trying to add an authentic Australian touch? ...Don't answer that. At least it's not yet-another-Dreamtime-mythos.

Eventually Steven digs farther into the story mythology, which turns out to be appealingly creepy and hallucinatory. However, overall, I was not enthused.


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