The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

Another one of the Reddit one upvote recommendations. I think this one was recommended alongside a series I like very much, with the promise that it was romantasy, but with some interesting stuff going on in the background.

All of that is true: the fantasy elements of this were inventive, novel, and present. We are in a set of parallel realms, where rangers like the male lead Hart protect society from the spirits of the dead. We have talking animals who deliver mail, souls housed in the appendix, immortal demigods - it's a set of things that's frankly quite interesting. However, these elements seemed somewhat simplistic and controlled, as if Bannen was a little afraid to tackle fantasy on the often rigorous and too-demanding level of the genre. The conflict was very surface-level to the world Bannen lays out, despite the creativity that clearly went into it. Of course, this isn't something only romance authors are guilty of - I sometimes make similar complaints about Jen Williams, one of the most creative authors of fantasy out there, and one of my favorites.

The bigger issue with this book is that the fantasy elements struggle to contribute much to the plot at all, besides creating the romantic issues that drive the You've Got Mail tropes. Very little in this book was surprising other than the actual premise of the world, and I just don't enjoy genre romance enough to call this good. I'd recommend this for romance readers who want a bit of interesting fantasy in their stories, but I don't think people who read a lot of fantasy will find the fantastic elements of this convincing. I did casually enjoy it, but I think I'll pass on the sequel. 6.5/10.