This book is a far cry from the types of books I have been reading lately, which have consisted of a great deal of science fiction and fantasy novels that are heavy on romance. I was worried that after consuming so many of these books, that in having found my true love in reading in this genre and the very reason why I believe I exist on earth at this point in time, any other type of romance novel would be wasted on me. But I was pleasantly surprised, this was a nice change of pace. It was actually refreshing to read a book that didn’t have odd names that I could never be sure I was pronouncing correctly paired with a backstory that spanned millenia, of which you had to know for the overall story to make sense.
I was surprised by how much this book not only made me think in a philosophical way about the deep questions of life and what is beyond it, but by how much it made me laugh. The character Pestilence, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, doesn’t mean to be humorous but I find him to be so at times. He speaks differently from modern man, elegantly. When he converses in his very serious and purposeful manner, it reads in such a way that it made me laugh literally out loud several times. Being that he is an entity from another plane of existence, he doesn’t always understand modern day phrases. It is very amusing reading about a handsome, muscular, powerful man that doesn’t understand slang terms for bathroom. And I love that the female main character, Sara, teases him by throwing his own archaic words and phrases back at him sometimes. And while there is a good deal of humor in the banter, this is also a pretty dark novel. It is about Pestilence, the bringer of plague, and his victims do not fare well. There are mild depictions of what the plague does to the body which some people might find gross or disturbing. Besides that, there is a a fair amount of torture performed, especially in the beginning, and many assassination attempts. This is a gore heavy book. But if that doesn’t bother you, if you indeed enjoy reading about those sorts of things, I think you will have a great time.
Being that this book is about one of the four horsemen, you could probably guess that there are additional books for the remaining three horsemen. And you can probably also guess that I will be reading all of them, in order, over the next few weeks. The next one in the series is War, and I am pretty interested to see what this horseman is going to do with his power to attempt to destroy humanity. I think when I finish the series I will give an overall opinion, something I don’t think I have done before. I think this might be useful in letting people know if the series I read are worthy of their time.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 