D
Genre: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Look, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve read some shit. I read the book about the blue alien/robot people who exist, I think, just to have buttsecks. I read the book about Santa’s Reindeer shifter. I read a book once about a guy who has psychic visions of murder and his eyeball rolls around in his head when it happens. Just the one eye though. Because two would be too much, I guess.
I thought I was pretty much impervious to the WTFery subgenre, but it turns out I’m wrong. I think Pestilence might have broken me.
When I looked at this book, I thought to myself, how you can write a convincing love story between a woman and one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse? and I think the answer is that you can’t. At least not for me.
That said, while this book did not work for me, I can totally see how it would be absolute catnip for other readers. Things this book has include:
- A captivity narrative
- A virgin hero who is learning how to People and is confused by everything
- A horse named Trixie Skillz
And I think that, if Pestilence (the character not the book) hadn’t actually been killing people everywhere he went, it might have worked for me, too. I just couldn’t get past the grimness of it all. And this book is grim.
It opens up in a currently-apocalyptic world where technology has failed and Pestilence, the first horseman of the apocalypse, has shown up. Everywhere he rides, people become infected with a plague called Messianic Fever and die.
Sara Burns was a firefighter/EMT before the world started to end. She and the three men who make up her crew are helping their city evacuate and draw straws so see who will stay behind and try to kill (or at least slow down) Pestilence. Sara draws the short straw and embarks on a suicide mission.
She waits for the horseman, tries to kill him, and it all goes horribly, horribly wrong because he can’t die. Furious, Pestilence takes Sara captive. At first she’s forced to run behind his horse and nearly dies of exhaustion and hypothermia. As they spend more time together, Pestilence starts to show some kindness toward Sara.
Pestilence is described as being beautiful in an other-worldly way. Kind of like if Elrond fucked up on career-day somehow and became a harbinger of disease and misery:
I hear him before I see him. The muffled clomp of his steed’s hooves echoes in the chill morning, at first so quiet that I almost imagine it. But then it gets louder and louder, until he comes into view.
I waste precious seconds gaping at this…thing.
He’s sheathed in golden armor and mounted on a white steed. At his back is a bow and quiver. His blond hair is pressed down by a crown of gold, and his face–his face is angelic, proud.
He’s almost too much to look at. Too breathtaking, too noble, too ominous. I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t expected to forget myself or my deadly task. I hadn’t expected to feel…moved by him. Not with all this fear and hate churning in my stomach.
But I am utterly overwhelmed by him, the first horseman of the apocalypse.
Pestilence the Conqueror.
The more time Sara and Pestilence spend together, the more interested he becomes in her as a person. Sara tends to those affected with the plague because even though she cannot cure them, she can ease their suffering. This surprises Pestilence. Sara begs him to stop killing people, but he tells her that cannot, and that he too is disturbed by the deaths.
Pestilence is at first cold and distant, but slowly starts to humanize as he spends more time with Sara. He tries food (he doesn’t need to eat, but he can). He gets drunk (for real). He’s baffled by his sexual attraction to Sara.
He’s also a confused virgin, so if that is your catnip, here you go.
But he’s still killing a lot of people, including children, and that’s why this didn’t work for me. I can accept vampires, gargoyles, hellhounds, and demons in my paranormal fiction without an issue. They usually don’t kill enough people for it to be considered a genocide, but Pestilence does. Even as he falls in love with Sara, he continues to wipe out entire cities. I couldn’t get past the horror of it. There’s a scene where they go to a hospital, and he knows it horrifies Sara because the people there are already too sick and weak to evacuate. It made me want to throw up.
To be fair, I guess it’s his job, or what he was created for, but it’s too much to take. I honestly think that surrounded by that much death, I’d disassociate from reality rather than develop feelings for anyone or anything.
Sara is supposed to be the person Pestilence needs to see humanity’s redeeming value. It’s her love that…
Also, Pestilence doesn’t infect Sara with the fever, which means he controls it to a large degree. The fact that he’s making the choice to kill people this way bothered me a lot more than if he was unable to control his abilities and was moved by some divine hand.
BUT NO.
HE SAYS HE HATES KILLING PEOPLE BUT HE DOES IT ANYWAY AND HE DOESN’T HAVE TO AT ALL. FUCK YOU DUDE. And Sara forgives him for all the people who died because he knocked it off.
While I like a redemptive love story, this one pushed the bounds of my credulity too much.
This isn’t a Christian romance, if you’re wondering. It obviously contains Christian themes, but Pestilence claims all religions are right and all religions are wrong. We never get a clear answer to why the apocalypse is happening other than “people are bad.”
So why do I think this will work for others? If you can get past the genocide, which is a thing I never actually thought I’d type, the whole humbling this supernatural, all-powerful creature with love is definitely a trope a lot of people enjoy, including myself. Once Pestilence warms to Sara a bit, the slow burn of their affection for each other is intense and so is the unresolved sexual tension.
Also this book can be really funny. Sara is trapped in her own head a lot with (mostly) only Pestilence for company, and she needs to amuse herself. She decides to name Pestilence’s horse:
I press the thermos closer to the horseman, not dissuaded in the least by his protests. I mean, it’s hot chocolate I’m offering. Also, I really want to see if this guy is capable of drinking fluids. I haven’t seen him touch food or drink so far.
Pestilence’s hand digs into my hip, where he holds me against him in the saddle. “If I try it, will you quiet?”
“No, but you know you don’t really want me to be silent.”
My words are punctuated by the steady clop clop of Pestilence’s horse, who I’ve secretly named Trixie Skillz. I’m pretty sure the steed is male (haven’t checked because unlike some people I know, respecting one’s privacy is important), but no matter.
So this book does have some humor, and it has a hero that I think some readers may really enjoy, even if I couldn’t care about him. The plague thing is a lot to get over, but if you can suspend your disbelief, then it’s a solid paranormal romance.
It was just way too dark and sad for me.
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I thought this book was… ok. But you are 100% correct about the genocide being really hard to come back from. We’re talking about a hero responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions, but his reasoning is he was just doing his job ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now I’m all for redemption of villainous characters, or even characters who have committed atrocities, if they show actual redeeming qualities (Aral Vorkosigan, I’m looking at you). But really, the only redeeming quality this dude has is that he’s a hot Lee-Pace-as-Thranduil-looking mofo.
I want a Trixie Skilz t-shirt.
IF YOU CAN GET PAST THE GENOCIDE??
Um. Nope.
I was hanging in there during the review until finding out he had a choice. And CHOSE to kill all those people. I kinda threw up in my mouth. It would not be the first romance i’ve read to make me want to barf, but i think i’ll pass.
Actual good romance with the four horsemen: the Lords of Deliverence series by Larissa Ione. They’re a miniseries inside her demonica series, and the horsemen know what they are but are actively trying to stop themselves from beginning the apocalypse.
The prom dress on the cover really doesn’t say “this is a post-apocalyptic plague story in which the heroine is on a suicide mission to kill the embodiment of Death” to me.
That ending still makes me growly. There were no consequences to his decision at the end. So where was the conflict?
I really wanted to like this book but killing kids on the page is just a hard pass for me. I’m curious about the second book War but I don’t think I’ll read it. Also, the sexytimes were seriously hampered by that name. Every time she said his name I cringed.
@ Katie Lynn
Seconding Larissa Ione’s Lord of Deliverance series.
Ignoring the entire premise, I think that cover is really gorgeous. Very much Not My Thing, though; I kinda wish it was attached to another book.
NO NO NO NO NO NO. HARD LEFT.
I also love the “unfeeling hero’s icy heart is thawed in the microwave of love” trope, but on a small scale (sad cowboys and single dads). I think it’s spectacularly misplaced anytime it shows up in a story where Icy Hero has been mass-murdering people.
If the heroine’s love is all that changes the hero’s outlook on killing innocents (looking at you, mob kingpins, drug runners, apocalyptic horsemen), then the correlation follows that if she doesn’t love him, or chooses not to be with him, or meets someone who doesn’t need to be told not to squish kittens, then he has lost his safeguard and may freely return to his murderous ways. It places an absurd onus on the woman to be responsible for a man’s morality, potentially at the expense of her own freedom or happiness (which is already a grossly common real-life expectation). To me this storyline always sounds like a creepy echo of those men who shoot up shopping malls and blame it on not being shown enough attention by women.
@Katie Lynn-thanks you for mentioning the Lords of Deliverance series. It’s the first thing that popped into my head when I was reading this review but couldn’t remember the name. Knew it was Larissa Ione, though. I enjoyed that series, even with some of the wtf?.
I read the spoiler because I’ve seen enough reviews and status updates of this book to be convinced that it isn’t for me, and ooh, the stuff in the spoiler would have pissed me off. Yeah, this guy sucks too much to deserve a HEA.
The cover totally looks like someone’s Lord of the Rings elf romance crossover fan art, which I admit is why this book got my attention in the first place. I have a weakness for pretty guys in glittering golden armor.
Elyse, I love this review. Wish there was a way to ❤️ reviews. I also totally agree with Rose about expectations that women keep men behaving correctly and therefore are sort of being held captive by society’s interests
If he’d been put under a spell and had no choice in his actions, and hated what he was literally forced to do, I would not be able to read it, but I’d have a little more understanding of the book as a whole. Since genocide is a real thing in the world and he actually had a choice? This makes the entire storytelling experience completely offensive and disgusting to me. How could there be a love story like this? I’m horrified.
I agree 100% with the review! As I was reading it, I thought it would be difficult to make this guy lovable, redeemable and worthy. How can someone fall in love with Pestilence? Was he someone who needed a love interest? And what about the other 3 Horsemen? Yeah, I don’t think so. Thanks for the great review!!
Elyse, if you want to read about some sympathetic horsemen, try Veronica Rossi’s book, Riders. It’s part of a duology and so so so so good.
This makes me think he’s turning people into rabid televangelists and other people kill them just to get them to shut up.
But seriously, if it was a compulsion against his will that would be one thing, but if he had a choice from the beginning, and was just going along killing people because ho hum, most boring job in the world but somebody has to do it — um, no. If he sacrificed himself for love like Darth Vader, maybe, but no, no HEA for this guy.
Sorry, mucked up that entry. It was the thing about Messianic Fever that made me think everyone was turning into rabid evangelists.
For a more enjoyable take on a bringer of death, I’d recommend Piers Anthony’s On A Pale Horse. It’s the first book of his Incarnations series, and Zane remains my favorite version of Death.
Also, if all religions are correct, why would a construct of any one religion exist, or have dominion over those that don’t believe in that construct? Now I’m making my brain hurt.
*is reading the review*
I might want to check this out…
*clicks the spoiler*
EW GROSS
*physically recoils and almost falls out of his chair*
NO NO NO NO NO
@Rose – your comment is everything. That is part of a serious conversation that I think needs to happen but that usually doesn’t happen. Thank you so much for posting that.
WARNING: RANT AHOY.
I hated this book.
I can handle some moral complexity, but this book wasn’t just a bridge too far for me – it was an ocean too far. I actually thought this book was full-on morally bankrupt, for the reasons you note, and also for this one: consistently, Sara and Pestilence are portrayed as sympathetic, even heroic (there is one scene in particular that portrays Pestilence as a Christ figure), while those who resist Pestilence are portrayed as (at best) small-minded, and at worst, as vicious rapists.
Moral complexity would be recognizing that all of these people are engaged in a full-on, desperate struggle to stop a murdered before he kills everyone they love, and kills them horribly. Depicting them as sexist, sadistic villains is a cheap cop-out. They’re heroes: Pestilence is a monster, and Sara is a collaborator. And the kindly couple who cheerfully accept their horrible death while urging Sara to be nicer to that book Horseman of the Apocalypse, because he really loves her? They’re collaborators too. They’re the bad guys.
Like, when I read the Goodreads comments on this book, a little bit of my faith in humanity died. Would everyone dish about how dreamy Josef Stalin was if the book had a pretty enough cover? There are protagonists that can’t be redeemed into heroes. There are HEAs that I won’t root for. And this is one of them.
Elyse!!! You left out the best (grossest) part!! They have their first kiss right after she throws up from being sea sick!! Like right after, no tooth brushing or mouthwash!!! I almost threw my Kindle across the room.
You don’t need to invade a horse’s privacy to sex them. A casual glance usually suffices.
I was intrigued by the premise (and the pretty cover).
Thank you Elyse for sparing me.
And thank you all for th rec to Lords of Deliverance. That one sounds great.
This is another Thank You for sparing me. It’s been in my Amazon recommendations feed for ages, and I love a good dark wtfuckery captive fantasy. But I think I’ll pass… Despite the ratings, I needed to see a review from someone I trusted, especially for Indie published.
I read the whole book too because I had enjoyed Thalassa’s other books to an extent and really wanted to see how she could pull this off.
I agree with you. She didn’t. It was just awful. And the HEA was so ……. wtf.
I can’t buy a Pestilence that looks like a pretty Elven king, sorry not sorry. If he had boils, oozed and was cursed to kill against his will, and if Sara was less of a Mary Sue, this might be up my alley.
But, but, but haven’t we only just recuperated from this very thing happening in real life (for, er, a given definition of “real”) on The Bachelor?
Dammit! I thought that gorgeous cover looked familiar. Done in again by that damn one-click button. Well, now I know what’s being moved to the bottom of my ridiculously sized (and somewhat overwhelming) tbr pile.
*Grrr*
Y’anno this book might have actually worked better if they’d gone w/ him being Conquest instead of Pestilence. Certainly could have been less death. Def a hard pass for me.
Great review, Elyse. I really struggled to keep reading this one and almost gave up several times. I’ve enjoyed quite a few Laura Thalassa books, but this one crossed the line for me of what was believable/acceptable/enjoyable in a romance novel. It really was so very grim. And repetitive too! New town, new home, everyone dies, main character comforts them before they die, and repeat. So strangely enough, despite the grim subject matter, I found it pretty slow too.
Totally with you here. I was confused because apparently the Horsemen answer to God, so one assumes God sent them, but then it seems like God only sent Pestilence so he would learn to stop killing people. Is Pestilence’s moral arc worth decimating the world population? Really? Also, I got so annoyed with the heroine occasionally thinking, “Oh no, we don’t have contraception…Oh, well, nothing I can do about it!” while she’s pilfering supplies every three pages.
The Stockholm Syndrome is strong with this one.
I have never read a romance novel…thought I never would. As far-fetched as this was, I have to say I liked it…BECAUSE of how incredibly dark it was. Maybe this guy did have a “choice”, but he wasn’t even HUMAN…that wasn’t his natural form. We don’t know what he actually was or where he came from…he’s old…ancient. Maybe “choice” is a term that was completely foreign to him…and maybe he was given that form for her…which, clearly it worked for whatever reason “God” had for him to not kill her. God is said to have done some pretty horrible, cruel things to humanity…from what I understand. Why would a “divine test” be so surprising?
Despite his external beauty, he would be a undeniable sociopath, in human terms. But maybe for his own kind…he was being true to his nature. I guess I’m confused on how one can expect human traits to be exhibited by something that isn’t human. He evolved, through his connection to her and she loved him despite who he was and all the horrors he inflicted on humanity…because he wasn’t HUMAN and realized she could not change his nature. Maybe he realized the true meaning of “choice” without it being tied to power, but tied with love, which comes with great risk…as a result, understanding/embracing the true nature of love, which is the surrender of the power and the need to control.
…I don’t know, I enjoyed it…though, I did have difficulty imaging him in jeans and a flannel shirt.
The author’s last name means “sea” in Greek and MUSTbe a pen-name as it sounds very funny to a Greek ear…
@DonnaMarie
I had the same thought! Generally when a book presents a paradox like this I just tell myself it must be a Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods kind of situation.
All the deities anyone ever thought of jostling for exclusive worship in the hearts and minds of the people.
@Bu – Since you mentioned him, can I just say that Terry Pratchett’s character Death (or DEATH) is an example of a horseman of the Apocalypse done right: he is non-human, he loves deeply (non-romantically), and he sometimes suffers horribly as a result of his nature. For those who need brain bleach for this book, may I recommend Pratchett’s Thief of Time which is (like all his books) very funny, but also a genuinely moving story about the ways a romance between a human and a non-human anthropomorphic personification might actually go. (There are several. They’re complicated.)
Not gonna lie. This is the sort of cover I would buy, but…this cover also gave me the impression it was a YA fantasy romance about a girl who finds out she has magical powers and falls in love with a reasonably-armored lady-knight from the Fairy realm.
I wish I had seen this review before reading this book on a whim one night. My baby was up all night and I just needed something and badly chose this one.
Spoiler: he kills two kids slowly. The parents die first then the kids who cry for their mom. I was nursing my baby sobbing. I thought it’d be a cool fantasy romance. Maybe a little dark because horseman and all that. BUT NO it was genocide. I wasn’t prepared.
@Chris K, I’m so sorry. 🙁 I read a book like that once. It was so dark and distressing that 10 years later, I still haven’t gotten over it. I hope you have some good “chasers” to wash this one away.
@liza S -thanks ❤️! Bad book hangovers are the worst for sure. I did binge read Cassandra Gannon’s back list. She’s also on kindle unlimited and was a fantastic palate cleanser.