TL;DR Review: A shockingly good debut. A dark and beautiful story about hurt people finding healing through healing another.
Synopsis:
Kairos will stop at nothing to get his revenge. He chases the man who took everything from him deep into the twisted land of death, Reaper’s Bend.
Eris refuses to give into the curse that’s slowly killing her. Legend has it that the fabled Eternity Tree resting at the edge of the Bend might just save her.
Monsters and creatures from out of their nightmares await them as they stumble into a web of ancient blood feuds, discovering quickly that their tasks are not as simple as they seem. And in Reaper’s Bend, even death itself may not be a respite.
Full Review:
I’m calling it now: Jonah Evarts is a talent to watch! Anyone who comes out swinging so hard with such a powerful debut is an author the world needs to take notice of.
Reaper’s Bend drops you into a grim, gritty world: mostly barren save for plants and animals that are definitely trying to kill our main characters, it feels like the wastelands of The Vagrant and The Dark Tower. It feels tonally similar to those as well, with a character (Kairos) who is hell-bent on pursuing their family’s murderer across this blasted world, at any cost, even if it sets him to face down gods and monsters of nightmare.
But where it diverges from those books is that Kairos is not alone. Where his journey begins with only the nightmares in his head for company, he ultimately finds himself companions who are too stubborn to leave him behind: Eris, a bounty hunter trying to outrun a terrible curse, and Dog, a dog who…well, he’s just the goodest boy in a lot of truly delightful ways.
Both Kairos and Eris are haunted by their pasts, carrying through this wasteland enough emotional baggage to fill three wagons. As they journey together, the broken pieces of their lives slowly start to fit together—accidentally at first, but more intentionally the more they come to understand each other. It becomes a story about hurt people finding healing through healing another. Their stories are unique, and yet they both bear deep scars and are trapped in their own lives. It’s only when they each help the other that they find their own way forward to healing and a better life.
Be warned: this is not a happy story. It’s dark, bloody, gripping, and visceral. Kairos dies repeatedly, and every time he is dragged back to life by the mad god who is determined to use him to execute his vengeance on the world. There is suffering, there is pain and loss, there is so much misery in this bleak world.
And yet, by the end, you will find you have been on a journey that leads to…if not a happy ending, one that is incredibly emotional satisfying. The ending had me in literal tears, and I found myself truly enchanted by the journey.
It starts off a bit slowly, focusing on the individual characters’ suffering and pain, but once it kicks off and really sinks its teeth into their bond, it becomes an emotional experience I cannot recommend highly enough. One of my top indie reads of 2025, one that marks Jonah as a talent to watch for sure!
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