Ein is on a mission from God. A God of Death.

Time is up for the Emperor of Ten Kings and it falls to a murdered eight year old boy to render the judgement of a God. Ein knows he can’t do it alone, but the empire is rife with heroes. The only problem; in order to serve, they must first die.

Ein has four legendary heroes in mind, names from story books read to him by his father. Now he must find them and kill them, so he can bring them back to fight the Reaper’s war.

I’m fairly certain that Rob J. Hayes’s book, Where Loyalties Lie (which I’ve still not read), is the first self-published fantasy book I ever purchased. I believe the term “Pirate-crombie” had been thrown around, and that was all I needed to know. Prior to that, I had been sent maybe one or two self-pub fantasy novels, most notably The Heart of Stone by Ben Galley. Since then, while I haven’t read quite as many self-published fantasy novels as I’d like, I’ve certainly gotten swept up in just how much is out there, and how fucking radical so much of it is!

And speaking of radical…that Never Die cover. I mean, goddamn. It caught my eye & captured my imagination in a big way…kudos to Felix Ortiz for the image & Shawn King for the cover design!

This Asian-inspired standalone (I think?) seemed like a great place to start with Hayes’s work, and I enjoyed the hell out of this…there’s sort of a grimdark samurai vibe to the whole thing, with some gnarly splashes of horror sprinkled throughout.

Hayes wastes no time in this one…things start off bloody & chaotic, and almost as soon as we meet one of our heroes, Itami Cho (aka The Whispering Blade), she is cut down & killed in battle.

Only to be resurrected by a strange little boy named Ein.

From there, it turns into sort of a quest novel, with Ein & Cho wandering around to find (and kill…and then resurrect…IT’S COMPLICATED!!) the most legendary fighters & warriors. They are all bound to Ein, with the promise that if they help him complete his mission of revenge, he’ll restore them completely. Because they’re only “mostly alive.”

The assembled crew is varied & extremely colorful…Hayes creates some incredibly nuanced characters in a relatively short novel. And while the book is (of course) heavy on death & dismemberment, none of it comes cheap, because you’re fully invested in these people. Zhihao (aka The Emerald Wind) is especially fascinating. An ill-tempered bandit who wants nothing to do with…well, anything. But he really grows so much over the course of this novel, and delivers some pretty gut-punchy character moments throughout.

As I mentioned, there are some true moments of horror in Never Die, something I absolutely love in a fantasy novel. Shambling corpses/spirits, half-flesh & half-skeleton? YES! Sign me the fuck up! I was reminded more than a little bit of Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire & Red Queen’s War series. Never Die features some VERY gruesome monsters!

This was just a blast to read! There’s a shit ton of action, some great dialogue, interesting characters…there’s magical swords…MAGICAL SWORDS!!! I had been meaning to read something from Hayes for awhile now, and I think Never Die was as good a place to start as any!