Narrated by:   Jessica Almasy
Length:   9 hrs and 10 mins 

If not for the sense of completion I wouldn’t have finished it

This is not a good book.  Honestly the last 5 chapters or something I had to listen to at 1.2x the normal speed, just so I could be done with it.
The previous 2 books had plot holes, like situations that were raised and then were never really returned to.
It’s more the case in this book.

I think to be fair, I’m the wrong target audience for this book, and perhaps girls 12-18 or what I presume is the true target audience will way more easily gloss over these plot lines that seemingly go nowhere.

Something else that another reviewer on audible mentioned, is that there’s no real indication of time.  At one point in time the character Driggs mentions that its’ only been 2 days since they left Croak, but you would have assumed its been at least a month or something.

The book focuses a lot on the city of Necropolis and the idea to incite rebellion and overthrow the President of the Grimsphere, for which Lex, Mort and their little entourage can then do what needs to be done and stop human involvement with the afterlife. However, it does it in a way that you just end up getting bored… there’s running this way, and that.. but all of it sounds almost pointless.

The morality as well in this book and this series is truly terrible.  There are 3 types of ‘killing’  Killing to retrieve the soul and send it to the afterlife, damning a soul which is what Lex can do….(which by the way is originally considered a rare ability, but it seems many people can just copy the power from her) and then there’s sending the soul to oblivion.

Damning is originally explained as the soul will forever undergo pain and suffering.  And oblivion is as if the soul never existed.  And somehow this latter one is portrayed as worse than the damning.  Something which Lex has apparently been doing ever since she got the ability….which she also expects her friends to forgive her for… because in her mind its just the same as having the thoughts.

Only 1 ‘friend’ Ferberus, seems to have a normal kind of morality and states that it is wrong.

The narrator seems to be able to act Lex’s ‘turn on the tears, emotional outbreaks / fake remorse’  a little too well, and hence you end up really despising the main character.

Lex constantly behaves like a child, in terms of not asking what would seem to be important questions to ask.  And even though her Uncle Mort appears to treat her like an adult at the start…. ends up still treating her like a child, like with-holding information from her that seems crucial to the overall plan, and then wondering why she’s acting like a child.

If you treat young adults like children they will behave like children.  Treat them like an adult and there’s more chance they will act like it.

I wouldn’t be so surprised to learn that this book/ series was written by a 13 or 14 year old, and then polished up by an adult to make it more-or-less sensical and a little more grandiose than the original but not by someone that truly cared about the divergent plots lines and had the courage to tell the teenage author… ‘we’ve either got to cut these out, or make them lead somewhere’

Recommendation?

With so many amazing sci-fi/ fantasy books out there at the moment, it’s a shame to get one that is below average.

The series as a whole could be edited and combined into one book quite easily, and the 3-part distinction seems like a money grabbing ploy.
For example, 1 book that was heavily edited in terms of cutting out plot lines that go nowhere, re-writing characters so that they weren’t so annoying, and generally not meandering in the writing and assuming the reader won’t care…that would perhaps make the story well worth listening to for more than a very narrow target audience which I assume must not care about all these things to rate it 5 stars.

The whole moral of the story seems to be: being arrogant is bad, not communicating enough is bad, treating teenagers like children will ensure they act like children, doing terrible things is ok if you have friends that have unconditional love for you, and apparently ‘call you parents every so once in a while’.

Honestly, it’s decided…I’m returning this book.  This did not meet the ‘Great listen guarantee’

Get a free trial of audible with 2 free books, listen to books hopefully better than this for free, & then if you want….just quit before 30 days & you get to keep everything… sounds like a pretty good deal to me.