The keeper of night by Kylie Lee Baker
Dear Books Lovers,
today we talk about the book that has practically divided the community of readers. Kylie Lee Baker’s The keeper of night published in Italy by fanucci editore whom I thank for the copy of the book. The keeper of night is a title I already knew before its translation was announced because it was added by Book of the Month to their collection of titles. It is also one of those titles for which I am not ashamed to say that the Italian cover is more beautiful than the original one, more colorful and more interesting for the story that is then told in the book.
It is a book that has divided the reading community for its style. From the plot I believe that this book transpires originality from every pore, I leave you the plot below so you can get an idea if you don’t know the story.
Death is her destiny.
Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can.
When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death…only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.
The beauty of the story lies in the fact that, for Japanese culture, Shinigami are the opposite of reapers, so Ren plays a very important role in life. She is half of each of these two entities, and the side she chooses to partner with will put her in a difficult position compared to her other legacy.
I liked the story a lot, and even if it took me a while to complete the reading, I’m glad to have come to the end because I discovered a lot of new things about Japanese culture, and about this world of shinigami that before now I had never heard of. On the other hand, I knew something about the reapers, having however read scythe and seen many TV series in which there was a representation.
I’m not saying I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed it a lot. I liked the setting, the adventure part and I liked Ren’s brother. I didn’t like two things about this book. The long chapters, which I always hate because they slow down the reading for me, which is why it took me so long to finish it, and Ren. I didn’t like Ren, I didn’t like how her character was written, too impulsive, too much “I want to do this thing because I think it’s more right but then I do something else because it suits me better”. Not having appreciated the protagonist actually penalized my evaluation on the book a lot, it took away a lot from it because if the protagonist is not worthy of this role then the whole built world falls like a house of cards that has only been partially kept up by her brother.
There is an extra penalty even because the story is written in the first person from Ren’s point of view and as mentioned before Ren is not one of the brightest people… if only the Reapers / Shinigami concept intrigues you a little , then give this book a chance. Ren may disappoint but everything else will not, it will be a nice trip. Besides, I know that not everyone has this aversion to long chapters like I do, so you might like it even more than one might expect.
