This book had a lot of strengths, and approached a lot of really interesting ideas. It’s a great premise: there are thousands of grim reapers who have daily and monthly quotas to fill. We follow one reaper as he struggles to meet his monthly quota of ‘random deaths’, and he finds ways to justify to himself the choices that he makes.

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The book is essentially a fictionalised version of a thought experiment: if you had to kill 30 random people, who would you choose? The woman with undiagnosed terminal cancer? The abusive husband? How do you decide who should live or die? It’s a fascinating question to explore through this medium, and forces the reader to consider that question for ourselves.

There were a lot of moral questions asked, and even if they weren’t necessarily answers, there was always some exploration the possibilities. I liked the ongoing theme of the Reaper searching for his humanity, and I liked the conclusion – the fact that ultimately, many deaths are preventable.

Really, this book was too short. It deserved more space for the world to be established, and for these moral questions to be explored. There were a few cliches that perhaps should have been avoided, and the twist/reveal towards the end didn’t have much impact as I didn’t feel embedded enough into the world for it to have much emotional impact.

There are lots of really great elements in this book, all tied together with a dark but entertaining sense of humour. I just would have liked a bit more, and to really be given the chance to explore both the story and the ideas in it further.

I received a free copy for this book tour. All opinions are my own.