I’m finally reading again! It took a bit for me to get back into it, but I’ve made my list of books in my TBR and I’m going to start working through all of them. To start off, Graveyard Shift by Angela Roquet, a book I have two copies of with different covers because I have been meaning to read it for that long.
The story follows Lana, a reaper who is passable at her job. She was created as a reaper and it’s a fine way to make a living, even if the pay isn’t that good and she is more inclined to bend a few rules if she likes a soul than follow them to the letter. She’s a fun character, with the personality of someone who’s sunk into complacency but doesn’t really want to be there. And when she learns that she’s going to get a promotion1 she looks at it with suspicion rather than as an opportunity.
The promotion leads into the bigger story, to the quest from Grim, the first reaper who acts now as their boss, and learning that Lana isn’t all she thought she was. She gets put on a quest and has to navigate some political intrigue2 in order to find the right soul to keep Eternity from devolving into a civil war.
Overall, it’s a really interesting concept and I really liked the way the world worked as a whole. The idea is Eternity is where all souls go, and they are shuffled off into their respective afterlives by the reapers. Every possible historical afterlife, from Heaven and Hell to Nirvana are all real, and they need souls to maintain their power in Eternity. During the story, for example, the Egyptian realm has been losing power and Grim’s been shuffling more souls off to them to appease them.
The story worked really well to reveal how the universe worked. You get a good look at the political climate of the world, of what does and does not register to who as an issue, and the worldbuilding really does work well in the narrative. I’ll admit to being more enamoured by the universe over some of the subplots,3 but the universe is just so much fun.
Also, Lana gets two giant hellhounds pups and I love those babies.
I would recommend checking it out. I really enjoyed the story, the world, and am thinking about checking out the next in the series.