Title: The Keeper of Night
Series: The Keeper of Night #1
Author: Kylie Lee Baker
Genre: YA, urban fantasy, historical, Japanese mythology
Publication date: October 2021
Published by: Inkyard Press
Source: Borrowed from library
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Synopsis: 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.
I really enjoyed this book! One of my favorite things about it was the mythology. I liked how every region's reapers served different deaths: Ankou in Britain, Yanluo in China, Santa Muerte in Mexico, and so on. Our main character Ren is half reaper, half Shinigami, and she's never really fit in with the London reapers. In fact, she was always being bullied by a couple of mean-girl-type reapers, who also happened to be High Reapers, so she was never able to defend herself because that would mean trouble. However, after an incident with these girls and her controllable Shinigami powers, Ren is forced to run away from London. So she sets out to Japan with the support of her little brother Neven, not only in hopes of finding her mother and learning more about her Shinigami side but also to find herself.
The journey that Ren went on was sad, but also very relatable. Her entire life, Ren’s been told who she is (or isn’t). She's always been a half-reaper or half-Shinigami, but she just wanted to be something whole. She wanted to be accepted somewhere and she wanted to decide who she was. Acceptance and self-discovery was a big theme of the book, and I really enjoyed following Ren on her journey.
Ren has had a hard life, but one person she could always count on to be in her corner is her brother Neven. He was such a sweetheart! I loved him! This, however, is not the norm for reapers. Reapers are supposed to be cold and emotionless, things that Neven is not. But Ren is. That was one thing I liked about her: she was a very complicated character who sometimes didn’t do the right thing. And that’s okay! It made things interesting. It also made her relationship with her brother interesting because he is actually a really good person. I loved their relationship because you could really see how much they cared for one another, but they also did butt heads at times.
I really enjoyed this world as well. Like I said, I loved the mythology with the reapers, but then we also got some Japanese mythology. Ren goes on a quest once she arrives in Japan, and we get to explore that world and learn about the gods and yokai—I love mythology so I really enjoyed learning about all this. It also helped that this book was so beautifully written! The places just sounded amazing! And spooky! The book had this slightly creepy undertone to it (what with death and reapers and all that) and I loved it!
But yeah, I really enjoyed this! I loved the mythology, the world, and the characters, and I enjoyed that it had a little bit of a horror element to it, which I was not expecting. There were some scenes that were VERY creepy and I enjoyed every minute of it! I also liked that it had a little bit of romance, and I actually liked Hiro. And that ending was NUTS! I was NOT expecting ANY of that to go down! Holy crap! I don’t know how I feel about that ending still, but I like Ren and her character arc has been very interesting so far. It’s definitely not complete though, so I’m looking forward to reading the sequel and seeing where things go from here.
Ren has had a hard life, but one person she could always count on to be in her corner is her brother Neven. He was such a sweetheart! I loved him! This, however, is not the norm for reapers. Reapers are supposed to be cold and emotionless, things that Neven is not. But Ren is. That was one thing I liked about her: she was a very complicated character who sometimes didn’t do the right thing. And that’s okay! It made things interesting. It also made her relationship with her brother interesting because he is actually a really good person. I loved their relationship because you could really see how much they cared for one another, but they also did butt heads at times.
I really enjoyed this world as well. Like I said, I loved the mythology with the reapers, but then we also got some Japanese mythology. Ren goes on a quest once she arrives in Japan, and we get to explore that world and learn about the gods and yokai—I love mythology so I really enjoyed learning about all this. It also helped that this book was so beautifully written! The places just sounded amazing! And spooky! The book had this slightly creepy undertone to it (what with death and reapers and all that) and I loved it!
But yeah, I really enjoyed this! I loved the mythology, the world, and the characters, and I enjoyed that it had a little bit of a horror element to it, which I was not expecting. There were some scenes that were VERY creepy and I enjoyed every minute of it! I also liked that it had a little bit of romance, and I actually liked Hiro. And that ending was NUTS! I was NOT expecting ANY of that to go down! Holy crap! I don’t know how I feel about that ending still, but I like Ren and her character arc has been very interesting so far. It’s definitely not complete though, so I’m looking forward to reading the sequel and seeing where things go from here.
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