Moody Emo Grim.
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Paranormal
No. of pages: 326
Lex is a teenage Grim Reaper with the power to Damn souls, and it’s getting out of control. She’s a fugitive, on the run from the maniacal new mayor of Croak and the townspeople who want to see her pay the price for her misdeeds. Uncle Mort rounds up the Junior Grims to flee Croak once again, but this time they’re joined by Grotton, the most powerful Grim of all time. Their new mission is clear: Fix his mistakes, or the Afterlife will cease to exist, along with all the souls in it.
The gang heads for Necropolis, the labyrinth-like capital city of the Grimsphere. There, they discover that the Grimsphere needs a reboot. To do that, the portals to the Afterlife must be destroyed…but even that may not be enough to fix the damage. Things go from bad to worse, and when at last the fate of the Afterlife and all the souls of the Damned hang in the balance, it falls to Lex and her friends to make one final, impossible choice.
The whole Grimsphere is against Lex and the gang of Junior Grims with Uncle Mort in the lead. Expect death, Damning and running, screaming for your life.
The plot for ‘Rogue’ was a lot of fun, plenty of action and twists that I enjoyed. Though there was something about the tone and narrative style that was lacking in comparison to the first two novels. The witty banter, Dad jokes, and sarcastic asides felt juvenile and did not pack a punch. Plus there was this whole dynamic between Uncle Mort and Lex where the parental figure was keeping information and facts from the junior ‘for their own good,’ that whole just do as I say thing. It was repeated so many times it was frustrating. It was set up this way for latter reveals in the plot… but, um… girl that’s not a good way to do it. Such a heavily guided hand by the author, instead of letting the story unfold organically and let the characters grow.
I found myself putting this book down a lot. A lot. I’d get five to ten pages read and then need a rest. The pacing did not start pick up until after the halfway point. I did enjoy the story overall, but it felt a little scattered. The cast are on the run from place to place, and there was no thread to anchor the narrative. Character reactions were all over the place, motives kept changing, some scenes were just messy. I think there was just too much going on in some places. This was not the concluding novel that I was hoping for. The snarky humour was gone, so there wasn’t much to balance out all the loss and death that kept happening.
And even the afterward did not tie up and address the main characters in a way that put the full-stop after The End.
Lex felt like a sullen whiny teen – I don’t get a feeling that she had a great character arc, not in this novel, and not since the start of this series. She was so funny in the first book, but the humour did not translate to the finale. Also I appreciated the more intimate moments between Lex and Driggs, but again it felt manufactured. Almost like cut scene, make out, and snap back to the action.
A cute-ish read that I think would have been awesome from a stronger developmental edit. A mostly satisfying end to the series, but not one that ended in an exclamation point.
Overall feeling: satisfactory finish.
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Casey Carlisle 