Review: What's the point?
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 21, 2014
The best part about Reapers is the final three pages, where we are given a glimpse of how things are going on Maui for Alden and Tristen. Why? Because these are the only three pages that mention any character you've cared about at all during the first 3 books.Instead, Robertson decides to tell two new, very unconnected stories. One about a girl on a mission to save her only friend in life, and another about a small-town farmer with some minor CIA training on a mission to save her adopted daughter's fiance from some slave traders. Throughout the book, Robertson continues to rely on his method of telling two stories at once, jumping from one to the other. It works really well when you have two equally compelling stories. In Reapers, Lucy is developed flawlessly; anyone who reads Lucy's story is rooting for her, while Ellie and her daughter are so shallow, and their story is so boring, that soon you will find yourself visibly annoyed everytime Lucy's story is interrupted with Ellie's.Dual story-telling also works well when the stories eventually tie in somehow. Lucy and Ellie were completely unrelated, and the closest they got to each other were being in the same city for a bit. These two stories had pretty much nothing to do with each other, which was a big let down.Spoiler-AlertThe ending is terrible. I was so angry after the ending. You created a great character, let her actually survive being shot just so she can be shot again, meaninglessly, on the way out of town, by a total stranger??? Did you even think that scene through? "Oh hey, I just saved ur town and killed your arch enemy, i'm leaving." "Not so fast! You got papers? No papers? BLAM! dead." That is the stupidest bs ending i've ever seen.  5 years into a post-apocalyptic doomsday where 1% of the world survived, and a guy is going to shoot a hot young girl (not many of these around) over her lack of papers?  You basically just wanted to kill her for the emotional effect it'd have on your reader. It was poorly done, not thought out, and in the end, fell flat and felt forced and contrived. You want to kill a beloved character? Make it count. Make it feel like a natural or inevitable death. Mia and Raymond's deaths were both well done. Lucy's? You lose fans over crap like that.