Review: A Main Character I Actually Like
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 11, 2013
For the original review and more, please visit markedbybooks.blogspot.comI almost never like the main characters. They're usually so naive and helpless, never having much of a story to tell unless someone else is willing to tell it for them. To me, the minor characters are the ones to watch. Their history is rich with imagination, and they can afford to be kind and selfless where the main characters cannot. They have the greatest personalities because they're not the ones trying to stay in the proverbial spotlight. They don't need to.Grave Intentions really surprised me by refusing to fall for this trap. Yeah, I still liked the minor characters (I mean, really, who could resist Pearl and Adam?) because they still kept all of their unique depth and stories to tell on their own, but they weren't the only ones. David really surprised me by being pretty freakin' awesome.Sure, I may tolerate the main character, but I don't usually like him, and he is certainly never my favorite. David is the exception. He had more history and depth and reason to him than most characters in any book could ever dream of having. He was certainly not perfect, but what else could you expect from that line of work? Being a reaper means being detached or losing your humanity to the countless deaths that surround you, like his boss did. Every time I saw David truly feel the pain from the souls he took, I couldn't bear to see him so saddened, but I was also happy in an offhanded sort of way. When countless lives lost starts meaning nothing to you, that's when you become less alive than the bodies you leave behind. And that is unacceptable.David may have come close a few times. He wasn't there yet, but in a few decades, if his time refused to run out, he may have reached his breaking point. David was probably more human in the beginning that most of the other reapers out there on their first day. Listening to his story of how he was damned to this nearly eternal torture broke my heart, and that's when I decided that no matter what, he deserved the happiness that was taken away from him too quickly.I was very pleased with the ending of this novel, even if it did seem a little predictable when it started coming to a close. I don't really think that there could have been a better option for the author to choose, but because it seemed like the only reasonable choice, it may have lost a bit of it's affect. Perhaps if more angles had been looked at before, I wouldn't have expected it as much, but honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal. In the entire novel, that was the only minor complaint I had, and if you ask me, that's not too shabby.TaylorFor the original review and more, please visit markedbybooks.blogspot.com