Review: Realm of the Reaper (Everworld #4)

Realm of the Reaper by Katherine Applegate
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So I finished the first third of this series, which I read as one book back in the days, and I figure it’s as good a time as any to try and write a more in-depth review for the thing.

Plotwise, I think the series is interestign–it goes from one event to the next almost without catching its breath, or just enough so that the reader doesn’t become unable to follow the emotional roller coaster. The bigger arc has only just finished setting up (spoiler: they’re going to fight the bad guy) but the road there was never boring because the event leading to this were important and well brought-in.
The relationships between the various divinities and their attached cultures are interesting, even though we don’t see much of them (and I guess the mythology of it could have been developped a bit more) and Senna’s place into this unfolds at just the right pace.

Where I’m a little less happy is in terms of writing style. I don’t particularly mean in terms of sexism or vaguely homophobic lines–yes, they’re bad taste and the books would be better without them, but they’re frankly baseline levels of sexism/racism/etc. so unless you’re really very sensitive to them, they shouldn’t drive you out of the series.
What I mean by that is that the writing doesn’t really change from one POV to the next. You can tell that April, Jalil, David and Christopher have different personalities–they think about different things, have different priorities and reactions to Senna, who is responsible for their situation, but their voices don’t change.

An example: Jalil is the only black character, and Christopher sometimes makes racist comments or jokes. Jalil calls him out on that more often than not (and when he doesn’t, it’s still acknowledged that he doesn’t appreciate that) but at some point of his narrative in this book, he talks about a crowd of men and their “skins ranging from espresso to skim milk”.
Given that food adjectives used to describe skins of color are a big No-no, it’s unlikely that a black person who is vocal about calling racism out would use them to describe other people.

Unfortunately, the writing style doesn’t really match the character it’s supposed to paint which, along with the fact that the plot is perhaps a little too straightforward for my liking, take a star down on the rating… still a goo read though.