They Call Me Death [Paperback]

I feel like this book had a lot of potential but it didn't quite manage to live up to my expectations. I was really curious about a story where shifters have revealed themselves to the public but did so as an act of war and aren't trying to live happily alongside humans. Unfortunately I was left with a lot of questions - why did they start the war? What happened to make them so anti-human? If they had such obvious physical differences (Alexia points out several times that she can easily spot shifters) then how did they remain hidden for so long? If these questions had been answered They Call Me Death would have been a much more satisfying read.

I also found myself a bit disappointed with Alexis, with a title like They Call Me Death I was expecting a heroine who could stand up for herself. This expectation was only raised by the warning on the back cover "If you are easily intimidated by kick-ass heroines who can hold their own against alpha males and bring them to their knees, this book is not for you!". Alexis spends a lot of time telling you she is kick-ass, she certainly acts like she must be when surrounded by her male army colleagues but when it comes down to it she fails to deliver. The one time we see her kill a shifter (even though it is in self defense) she breaks down and is horrified by her actions, hardly what I would expect from someone who has killed so many shifters that they actually refer to her as Death.

At first it was easy to feel for her, you discover in the prologue that both her husband and her son were killed by shifters when the war first began. It is easy to see why she would hate shifters and want revenge, her world was turned upside down and she reacted in a way that I think most people would wish they could. That just made it harder to believe the complete turnaround she makes when she first meets Andor, she lets him in far too quickly and it just didn't fit with what we knew of her personality. This just made their relationship completely unbelievable and I struggled to feel the connection between them.

The plot itself was fairly thin, shifters have been going missing and Andor is trying to find out what is happening to them. He comes to Alexis for help but it was never really clear why he needed her, I didn't see any evidence of her being particularly useful in the investigation. The two of them spend a lot of time running and hiding, the author skips chunks of time without making it clear what they had been doing during the gaps and the showdowns they do have with their enemies were mostly over too quickly with very little drama.

I had high expectations for this book but unfortunately it failed to deliver and I would struggle to recommend this when there are so many fantastic urban fantasy series out there.

"They Call Me Death" is a very strong title, which means this book had a lot to live up to. It started out well, with a prologue that was pretty intriguing, but unfortunately it fell at the first chapter due to poorly thought-out world-building and unimaginative characters.

In the prologue we are told how the world became what it is; an America divided into North and South between shifters and humans. Alexia is at home with her husband and child and watches a news anchor-man kill everyone in the studio live on TV, after shifting into a cougar.

This suggests that shifters had been living alongside humans for years, taking on human jobs, living human lives. However, further along in the next few chapters the main character, Alexia, tells us how she is able to differentiate between species even in human form due to "canines having overbites" (let me point out here that in another paragraph a few pages on it states 'underbite'), "felines can't hide their teeth when they talk" and "reptilians can be spotted by their skin" - wouldn't this have been noticeable before the shifters declared war and ate their work colleagues?

There is also mention that shifters had families - human families. How is this possible? What about children? Were they born shifters and if so wouldn't the parent have noticed reptilian skin or feline teeth?

The plot is also rather thin. In a nut shell there's a laboratory where shifters are presumably being held for some kind of experimentation. Andor, a Golden Eagle shifter, thinks his daughter is being held there and needs Alexia's help. There are a few twists along the way but that's pretty much it. We are given no explanation as to why the shifters turned on humans so violently and so suddenly.

Most of the story is 'told' rather than 'shown' which makes for tiresome reading, and the author had a habit of skipping chunks of the story by adding "10 days passed", "after two weeks" or jumping to the next day. Wouldn't it have been better to show us what happened rather than tell us in retrospect in the next chapter?

Being called "Death" by the enemy is a pretty big statement and Alexia had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately she didn't manage it and did absolutely nothing to back it up, as we never get to see her in action. We do see her, however, throwing her weight around with the guys at work. This was a little unrealistic to be honest, especially when she's only five foot eight and the guys she works with are well built and six feet tall. There needed to be more evidence as to why these guys would be scared of her and why shifters nicknamed her "Death".

Alexia and Andor's relationship happens too fast and isn't particularly explosive or toe curling. It took them only a couple of weeks to fall in love and shorter still for Alexia to trust him, even though she has a self-proclaimed loathing of shifters due to them killing her husband and child. The sex scenes were awkward and clumsy and didn't get me hot and bothered at all.

Andor's most appealing aspect is that he shifts into a Golden Eagle, which I think are magnificent birds. The author did try and express how beautiful and powerful Andor is in bird form but didn't quite manage it and therefore I didn't get a sense of how amazing he is.

Also, with just a little bit of research you can learn that Golden Eagles have a flight speed of approximately 30 miles per hour; their wing span can be up to 7 feet and they can carry prey three times their own body weight. Andor in shifter form is 6 feet tall with a wing span on 15 feet - therefore, taking all this into consideration, why oh why were Andor and Alexia running for their lives from the Alpha of the shifter divide when all he had to do was carry her and fly?

Although Alexia didn't get the opportunity to show us why shifters called her 'Death', she did have a tough-guy attitude, but her demeanour changed almost immediately when she met Andor. He kept telling her to keep behind him or wait in the other room. She even leaned into him at times like a simpering wimp! This isn't evidence of a woman called "Death"!

Another aspect I found rather strange was all the shifters seemed to speak in formal English, and yet have mixed with human society for years, blending in, pretending to be human, surely modern day speech would have rubbed off, if not then the human's around them would have found them all rather odd. Alexia starts out sounding like a modern day woman, but for some reason even she begins to speak formally:

"I'm not his to command, but I may be death for you unless you explain why you're here unbidden," I replied."

Unbidden?

VERDICT:

I really wanted to like "They Call Me Death" as I am a huge urban fantasy fan, but it had a lot to live up to with such a statement for a title - unfortunately the heroine, Alexia didn't pull it off. The world building and plot needed a lot more thought and better execution. It could have done with being longer with more 'show' than 'tell'. There were too many unanswered questions and hugely noticeable inconsistencies. I was constantly niggled, frowning in displeasure and sighing with annoyance. I may be reading about supernatural beings but it still has to be believable.

However, it wasn't the most awful book I've ever read, but would I recommend it? No...there are far too many fantastic urban fantasy novels to be read, so I wouldn't waste your time with this one.

This book stayed on my kindle for a few weeks before I got around to reading it. However, once I started, I finished it one sitting.

The story is written in the first person. But what makes this story work is that there is something endearing about the main character. I really enjoyed this book and will be checking out others from this author. Recommended.