Marshmallow reviews Fearful by Lauren Roberts

Marshmallow has already read and reviewed the three main books of Lauren Roberts’s Powerless trilogy:  Powerless, Reckless, and Fearless.  She has also reviewed the novella Powerful, set in the same world as the books of the trilogy, and placed in between the first two books chronologically. Today she reviews a brand new addition to this series: Fearful, a novella published just last week that retells some of the events of Fearless from a different perspective.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you liked Lauren Roberts’ previous books Powerless, Reckless, and Fearless, then this is the book for you!

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Mara is the personification of Death. Her job is to essentially bring all the souls of the dead to a place called the Mors, what seems to be another dimension with a hungry earth, mist, and lots of grey trees. In the Mors, she leaves the souls alone, desperate to escape, and many eventually go insane. It is implied this is for people who did bad things in their lives.

Mara is summoned whenever a person is about to die and needs her to pass into the realm of death. So when the new king of Ilya, Kitt, takes a dose of the deadly Plague in an effort to become more powerful, she feels called to him. However, for reasons not explained, she feels a special connection to the young king–despite the fact that she promised never to set foot in Ilya ever again (again, for reasons left unexplained). By taking the Plague, Kitt is now doomed to die, though he does not yet believe it.

Mara starts wandering around his castle while she waits for his death, and she starts to take an interest in the relationship between an Imperial named Lenny and Blair (who killed Paedyn’s best friend in a previous book). Though they are extremely combative, Mara looks at their souls and sees that they are bonded. As their relationship starts to bring them closer, Kitt gets closer to his end. Mara and Kitt start talking at some point and they too start to have feelings for each other. Mara teaches Kitt how to die and Kitt teaches Mara how to live.

The author insinuates that Mara had a past life and was human, becoming Death itself somehow; the details and actual explanations are not given. As the book progresses, Kitt’s illness gets worse and worse. Ultimately, the end is not unexpected, but it is heart-breaking nonetheless: Kitt faces Death. The question is whether Death will greet him kindly or not. 

Marshmallow’s Review: Lauren Roberts enjoys torturing her readers. All but a few characters end up with horrible endings and this book leaves so many unanswered questions. I hope Roberts will write another book that explains half of this book.

That said, I did like Fearful. It was very interesting to hear Roberts’ explanation of Death, the afterlife, and other fantastical aspects of this world. I was very unsatisfied by her lack of explanation about Mara though. I think she is probably setting up another book specifically about her.

I did like how Fearful focused on Kitt, who was always like a third wheel in the Paedyn-Kai storyline. I thought a lot of what is said in this book was described briefly in the previous stories, especially the third book of the main trilogy, but this one added a lot more.

I thought the writing was extremely good. Towards the end of the book, as Kitt approaches Death and starts suffering memory loss as a side effect of the Plague, the writing really helps show his mind and emotions. I did not like the ending at all though and was very confused.

I would still recommend reading Fearful. I just really would like Roberts to write a follow-up that finishes it up fully!

Marshmallow’s Rating: 95%.