Synopsis:
Rose Lin Fairchild didn’t believe in gods, but one chose her anyway.
Rose despises Raven, the god of Death. His mysterious commands. His mercurial moods. His closed heart. But most of all, she loathes that she was forced to become his Harbinger, a human mercenary tasked to fulfil their god’s every want and whim. Still, she would do it again, because being a Harbinger is the only thing keeping her best friend alive.
When a murder rocks the world of the gods, Rose is suddenly thrust into the immortal realm’s spotlight as Raven’s heir. This is her chance to free her friend once and for all. But in order for her to ascend, she must first prove herself to the other gods—and the one person standing in her way is a fellow Harbinger.
Étienne Beauchard is notorious for his sly wit and charming good looks. Rose can’t stand that he is the one assigned to test her abilities, but as their initial hostility evolves into an intense attraction, they find that the gods’ secrets go deeper than they ever expected. Something is wrong in the immortal world, something that threatens to break their bond and engulf them all in war.
As Rose and Étienne fight to uncover the truth and trust each other with their hearts, they realize that everything hinges on the same question: How far would you go to save the person you love?
Review:
Many years ago I’d read Marie Lu’s Legend, a Young Adult book that definitely fit into the era of Hunger Games-type dystopian novels. I really liked it but I probably haven’t read anything from Lu in the years since then. Between then and now, Lu finished up the Legend series and has put out numerous other wildly successful YA books as well. In Mortal Things, Lu puts her polished YA chops on full display with a tightly-woven narrative that had me on the edge of my seat for Rose and the seemingly impossible situation she’d found herself in.
The world-building works fantastically well throughout Mortal Things, as Lu answers questions about her world even before I even had them. Sometimes I read stories about gods who exist in our world and I often struggle with the credibility, finding tons of potential plot holes in the process, but here Marie Lu actually had me thinking “Well, I guess that could work…huh.”
The novel introduces Rose, our main protagonist, and Étienne, her rival, quite well. Rose is a harbinger of Raven, the God of Death, who must perform tasks in the mortal realm for him. Étienne represents the God of Lies and it’s clear that the two have an antagonistic relationship from the first chapter. Soon, Rose is promoted to be Raven’s heir and Étienne is chosen to challenge her place in Raven’s order of succession and we see that their relationship is maybe not quite as cut and dry as it seems.
For a good three-quarter of the book I was totally in, enjoying the growing push and pull of Rose and Étienne’s relationship. As that relationship is developing, we also see flashbacks of the relationship that led to Rose’s harbinger position in the first place – her deep friendship with Laine, whose life Rose saved in the process of becoming Raven’s mercenary. Those scenes really worked for me as well, but I’ll admit that I didn’t see the necessity of them at first.
By the time Mortal Things was hitting the home stretch, it lost a little of its steam. The mystery of Laine’s story comes into focus and the payoff may not quite hit as hard as Lu intended. In the end, I still enjoyed what Lu gave me, and I’ll definitely check out the next book in the Mortal Things series.
On the audio-front, Eunice Wong and JiaLing Pan handle the narration duties. Wong is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators and her voice really works well for Rose in this YA format. One handled the main chapters and the other tackled the flashback scenes, each providing unique voices and perspectives for their roles in Rose’s story.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing this book and Macmillan Audio for providing the audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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