This was a wonderfully written Young Adult Fantasy that draws you in from the first page. Robert does a wonderful job of crafting a compelling and interesting world with complex characters and plot lines you couldn't anticipate if you tried. The author does such a wonderful job of building a reader/character relationship that you even feel sorry for the characters that you know are bad. You can't help yourself!

Add to that, Robert lives in Vienna, so the tale is woven with Viennese landmarks, culture, and food that will truly make you feel as though you've escaped to a dream world. Reaper's Novice is part of a series. I strongly suggest that you pick up a copy today before you get behind on your reading! ( )

Reaper’s Novice got a new cover and I have to say, I really like it, because the new cover matches the story much more. Anna’s perfect life has began to slowly unravel. With family issues and faced with a decision that no seventeen year old should have to make, this turned out to be a great start to a new series.
Anna is a likable girl, she is strong and would do just about anything for her family. After making the decision to save her family’s souls, she begins her training as a Reaper’s Novice. Anna has so many questions and becomes so frustrated with not getting any answers. But the fact that she still stay strong and keeps going is one of the characteristics that made her very admirable in my eyes. Her mentor Zig was one fascinating guy. He was flirty, and mysterious, and was the one person that could help her uncover the truth behind it all. There were some secondary characters that were appealing enough. One that I will mention is Rolf, who was Anna’s boyfriend, and turns out to play a major role in the story. A few of her friends, Reiner and Lea were great as well. Grim himself was creepy but completely perplexing. I mean, he is the Grim Reaper so he is supposed to be creepy, but there was a story behind him and it’s one that I would like to know more about.
The world building was descriptive and vivid and the setting was beautiful and somewhere I would love to visit. This is twists that were slowly intertwined with all that was going on. The one complaint that I do have is that I would like to have learned more about Anna’s training earlier in the story, but it does come later on. With an intriguing plot, likable characters, this was an enjoyable read. I would definitely give this one a try. ( )

Ana had hopes and dreams – long term she wanted to finish school and become a musician. Short term, she wants to hold her family together, to bring peace to her constantly warring parents

That is, until her parents and siblings were all killed in a car accident, leaving Ana to make a desperate deal with Death to ensure her family had any future at all.

She is now bound as Death’s Novice, learning how to collect souls to pass on and seeing it encroach onto her own dreams. There’s a lot to learn and get used to – but, more than that, there’s apparently agendas that go even further than the complexities of being a reaper. A whole species may rest on her and everything she thought was true about herself may be just one long fiction.

And that’s a secret that is spilling out into the lives of her closest and dearest friends who are going through turmoils of their own.


I really don’t Ana, and it’s always a problem when I dislike a protagonist. There’s so much about her motivations I don’t get. She starts out reasonably enough, trying to hold her family, trying to save her family, rejoicing in them being saved – and then it all derails. She comes very quickly to resent and fear Ernest without the gratitude you’d expect (or even the suspicion you’d expect). Far more frustratingly, she is completely and utterly devoid of curiosity.

She’s just had her eyes opened to the supernatural world, she collects souls in a variety of colours, she is surrounded by beasts and beings of legend and mythology and she asks no questions. Even basic ones – Ernest tells her that a red soul is the sign of a vibrant, well lived life. Surely anyone, anyone at all, faced with that revelation would naturally ask what the other soul colours mean? But we never find out, we never learn.

Her lack of curiosity is being frustrating because it adds to make her character seem hopelessly passive. Everything that happens in her life, the life of her friends, whatever dramas surround her, whatever plots surround her, all the supernatural machinations – she just goes along with it. She barely questions, she rarely challenges she’s hardly ever pro-active and when she is it’s on odd ways that scream of Spunky agency: she goes to the Shadow Realm where she has been told repeatedly not to go despite having people who are far better trained and capable than she. She sneaks into the library to find answers – fine – but she hasn’t asked any questions! At this point, for all she knows she just has to ask Ernest for answers or even free access to the library and she wouldn’t have to go sneaking. She is constantly mushroomed (kept in the dark and fed shit) and she doesn’t question it. A whole range of characters tell her that she’s involved in something big and important that they just can’t tell her about – but at no time in the story does anyone reveal why it’s such a big secret, even when she tarts learning the answers we still don’t know why she couldn’t have been told all of this right at the beginning of the book! She is constantly asked to trust people she has no reason to trust and she does. A character even demands she gives up her life’s dream of going to the Conservatory and because he says so she does! That’s it! He says she should so she does. He says he can’t tell her why and she accepts it! This passivity becomes even more aggravating and problematic as the powers that be cause her boyfriend to become more and more aggressive, random and dangerous – even aggressive and threatening violence towards her and she is constantly forgiving. I could take her accepting Reiner’s demand for forgiveness after what he did. But the two together becomes even more unpalatable

On the few occasions when she is given information she never asks follow up questions. In one instance she even rejects answers and refuses to listen because she just can’t take the information.

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This book has a very likeable heroine. She is one who loves her family so much she will give up everything to save them from death.

I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more in the series.

Disclaimer - I was given a copy of the book in return of an honest review.