Masters of Death review
“What is holy? That which makes you fall to your knees.”
Chapter XII Touch
When death is not something to be feared, but rather something to be explored, personalized, and personified, that’s where you’ll find me. I have a special place in my heart for books (and media in general) that feature Death as a character. The novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak features Death as the narrator. The movie Meet Joe Black shows Death become human, experiencing life in all its aspects: business, sex, peanut butter. The TV show Supernatural portrays the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, including Death in the form of a fast-food-loving emaciated old guy with a cane.
“Sly, taking a languid sip: ‘Capitalism. The worst of all mortal inventions.’”
Chapter XVII Reinforcements
So, it comes as no surprise to me that Masters of Death by Olivie Blake (an impulse-buy from an adult book fair where I should have been selling books, not buying them) will be in the running for Best Book of 2024. Blake presents a version of Death who curses so often he wears a rubber band on his wrist to chastise himself every time he utters fuck. Death has got himself a godson – one who pretends to be a medium to connect grieving people with the spirits of their dead loved ones. And Death gets himself mixed up in a game of immortals, high stakes, and deadly consequences (no pun intended).
In Masters of Death, a mixture of world mythologies and pantheons create the canvas and an ensemble cast of characters including an angel, a vampire, and a ghost populate the painting.
“‘History is a cycle, you know. It’s function of gains and losses, of ups and downs. A single lifetime contains enough highs and lows to imitate completion, to simulate satisfaction, like any narrative given an end. But if you persist, as time does, then you will only encounter infinite highs, infinite lows.’”
Interlude VI: Past is Passed, Part II
Blake’s writing is sharp and witty, whip-smart and sexy. She describes Fox D’Mora, fake-medium and Death’s godson, as suffering “from a touch of motherfucker.” She claims: “You can never truly know a culture until you’ve been bitten by one of its myths.” I devoured this writing, a perfect balance of snarky and sentimental.
“He’d been like a painting before, present and enchanted but fixed, constrained; and now he was awake, he was dynamic and imperfect and free, and he had come vibrantly to life.”
Chapter XXI The Tables
The ultimate enemy in Masters of Death appears to be bureaucracy – I am not exaggerating; I leave it to you to discover what I mean. The penultimate enemy would probably be the things we leave unsaid to each other, in matters of love and loss. Despite how many characters are technically not human or in states of immortality, despite the paranormal and fantastical elements, this story explores the human, foibles, follies, and failures.
My thesis is this: read the fucking book. *Snaps rubber band on wrist.*
