Masters of Death by Olivie Blake

 THIS will be the book I send EVERYONE next year at Christmas.

You probably noticed a lot of books that don't really seem like what you expect me to be reading.  They are part of the "Blind Date with a Book" Valentine event at our library.  This one I picked up immediately because it was labeled "Vampire Fiction".  (I suppose to contrast it with the more common "Vampire Non-fiction" you see all the time.)  NOT REALLY vampire fiction.  Sure there is a vampire, but she isn't really the protagonist - just the catalyst.  That being said, I love this book.  (FYI - it is a love story.  A story about being mortal.  About what being mortal adds to one's existence.  Obviously, it is about death.)

More importantly, it is filled with absolutely delicious writing.  I have far too many to share - and yet, share I will.  Sit back.  Grab a cup of tea.  (I know no one is there.  Yet, still, I share.)

"The building is old, but the street is trustworthy and near the Blue Line stop, meaning that athough this is an odd part of town, it's safe enough to travel freely, and finicky mothers mostly worry about imaginary dangers, like tattoos and the ghosts of old Ukraninians."

"It's a generally accepted philosophy that there's no finishing college when one has eaten any portion of one's reasearch advisor..."

"Where were you while we were dying? While we were suffering, where were you?"

Watching," he said, and Gabriel noddded.  "There must be balance in this world, or how would we recongized evil when we saw it?"

"Who cares whether you recognize it?" she demanded.  "If heaven means casting your gaze aside, then I want none of it. You're not my gods, " she added stiffly.  "you have no claim to me."..

"True," Raphael admitted.  "We offer you something else entirely."

"Had you considered the possibility of afterlife employment?"

You don't seem too concenred," Tom commented.  "Come across us supernatural types often?"

"Well, like I said, there's only a distinction if you make one," the man told him , with a strange sort of dignified ease.  "A short redhead served me my coffee this morning, but that doesn't mean he's a leprechaun.  Doesn't mean he's not, either," The man conceded, "but the coffee was good, so the distinction is moot."

Where does Death reside?
In the dead, of course, and in the souls of the living; in their fears of the future and in the losses of their pasts.  Death lives in the too-quiet silences, in the deepest parts of the might.  Death makes a home in the moments of stiffness, the seconds before a fall; in the heavy-hearted candor of the surgeon's hands, the archer's bow, the executioner's ax, the injectioner's needle.  death lurks, he stalks, he waits -- or so we would believe, anyway, in our selfish vanities and prides, because Death lives so brilliantly in our consiousness that it is exceedingly difficult to imagine he might acctually have a home of his own.

"Are you always this infuiating/"

"Hopefullyl  I certainly aim to be, but everyone has off days."