Sarah McCarty: THE SHADOW REAPERS SERIES

Author:  Sarah McCarty
Series:  THE SHADOW REAPERS
Plot Type:  Soul-Mate Romance in the Old West
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—4; Humor—2
Publisher and Titles:  Berkley Sensation
          Reaper's Justice (2/2011)

          Reaper's Vow (3/2014)  

     This post was revised and updated on 4/19/14 to include a review of Reaper's Vow, the second novel in the series. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and a review of the first novel.  

            NOVEL 2:  Reaper's Vow            

     The hero of the second novel is Addie's cousin, Cole Cameron, whom we met in the first novel. Cole is an über-alpha warrior who has served as Addie's protector throughout her life. Cole rides the range on a huge horse named Rage and believes that "Women were a liability. Sweet and sexy and satisfying to dally with, but they tended to the emotional." (p. 4) At the end of Reaper's Justice, Addie disappeared with her Reaper lover, Isaiah, and Cole has been searching for them for two months. When he finally finds her—actually, when Isaiah rescues Cole from a gang of bad-guy Reapers—he has to admit that Addie has found happiness and true love, even though he still doesn't trust Isaiah.

     Isaiah's pack of Reapers lives in a secluded valley surrounded by impenetrable mountains. Supposedly, there is only one way into the valley, and that involves climbing up a tall, steep cliff face and then climbing down through a narrow opening into an underground passageway. McCarty emphasizes the difficulty of entering the valley to draw our attention to how secure it is. Unfortunately, she then adds some details that contradict her portrayal of the difficult valley access. For example, the Reapers have a stable full of horses. Even Rage, Cole's horse, shows up in the valley. How did they get the horses up the cliff face and down the narrow hole in the ground? Late in the story, a gang of bad-guy Reapers attacks Isaiah's compound. How did they get in without being detected by the sentries? These improbabilities are never explained.

     Almost as soon as Cole arrives in the compound, he meets Miranda, a scarred and emotionally wounded widow with a young daughter. He soon learns that the two of them were turned out of her house to make room for Cole. Then Cole discovers that they are staying with Clark, a cowardly bully who plans to make Miranda his second wife (the first one is still living). Even though no one likes or trusts Clark, and despite the fact that a number of single men are available for marriage, the Reaper Council is forcing Miranda to marry Clark. This makes absolutely no sense. Additionally, when Cole discovers that Clark has been beating Miranda, he asks some of the Reapers why they haven't stepped in to protect her. The answer he gets is that she didn't ask for help, so they didn't give it. Again, this is unbelievable because the men are otherwise portrayed as being reasonable and caring people.

     The love story is an easily predictable battle between Clark and Cole for Miranda's hand in marriage. Clark is such an obvious villain that you know from the beginning that Cole will be the winner. Complicating the story is the fact that Cole is bitten by a rogue Reaper in the first chapter, and the consequences of that bite are life-changing for him. As the story plays out, both Miranda and Cole are faced with major decisions as they fall in love and face an uncertain future.

     Although this novel features two interesting main characters, the mythology remains rather muddy. The Reapers know very little about their history and seem to have no control over their futures. In this novel we learn a bit more about their connection with the European werewolves, but not much. Blade, the Reaper enforcer, appears to be the key to learning more about themselves, but Blade keeps his cards close to his chest and gives up tiny bits of information only when it is of some benefit to his own purposes. What we do learn is that the mysterious men who created the Reapers were "a group of opportunists, businessmen as they liked to call themselves….They created us to be assassins and to provide them with…leverage" over their enemies and/or competitors. (p. 212)

     McCarty is well known for her erotic love scenes, and this novel is no exception. Cole and Miranda don't consummate their relationship until 2/3 of the way through the book, but from that point on, they spend a lot of time getting it on. If you love erotic paranormal romances in which all the men are dominant, overbearing alphas and all the women are feisty, but submissive in the bedroom, you'll probably enjoy this novel. Click HERE to go to this novel's amazon.com page. Then click on the cover art to read an excerpt.

            WORLD-BUILDING            

     Set in the post-Civil War American West, this is a Beauty-and-the-Beast-type series, with lovely young women falling for the fierce, barbaric Reapers who lurk on the edges of civilization. Each Reaper is a man who was kidnapped at an early age, injected with a mysterious substance, tortured at length, and turned into a werewolf. The Reapers were used by Them (always capitalized and always in italics) as assassins. If a Reaper completed his horrific assignments well, he was rewarded with drugs (aka "the cure") that calmed down his monstrous nature and turned him temporarily human. Without the drugs, the inner beast stayed in control. 

     Eventually, the Reapers revolted, killed Them, and set off for the western frontier, where they formed a governing council and set up a code of laws. The bad Reapers are unable to control their inner beasts, so they attack humans and cause various kinds of trouble. The good Reapers have slightly more control over their bestial natures, and their mission is protect humans and kill off the bad Reapers. The drugs They used on the Reapers destroyed their earliest human memories, so the Reapers have no recollection of their pre-Reaper lives and no real personal ties with their humanity. 

            NOVEL 1:  Reaper's Justice            
     As Reaper's Justice opens, Isaiah, a good Reaper and a council member, visits the home of a human woman he has been watching over for many years, only to find that she has been kidnapped by human bandits. He rescues her and takes her to his shack on a mountain top where she hires him to be her bodyguard and asks him to take her virginity. Adelaide Cameron ("Addie") has a tragic past. (Of course she does—ALL paranormal romance heroines have tragic pasts.) Some years ago, she watched Indians murder her parents and then spent several years in Indian captivity. Rescued by her cousins, the Cameron brothers, she has tried to make a new life as the town baker. (No real details are provided about Addie's years of Indian captivity. I guess we're expected to intuit that experience from watching old movies like The Searchers. Just pretend that Addie is the Natalie Wood character, Debbie, and that Colt is the John Wayne character, Ethan.) After a few days, Isaiah returns Addie to her home where they have a few days of relative peace before a gang of Reaper thugs comes to town and attacks Addie. The climax includes a life-changing experience for Addie.

     The silliest part of the story occurs after Isaiah and Addy get back to town. On the day they return, Addie gives him a lesson on how to bake bread, and—Voila!—he immediately turns into a top-notch baker. The man has been living as a reclusive barbarian for decades, has made his home in a stick-and-mud hut, and can barely hold a conversation, but within a day he excels at baking everything from spectacular apple bread to fluffy muffins. I don't think so.

     Other characters include Addie's three arrogant cousins: Cole, Reese, and Dane Cameron. Additionally, Blade, one of Isaiah's Reaper acquaintances, makes several appearances, first as one of the bandits and later as one of Addie's rescuers. Besides the obvious conflict in the story, Addie's relationship with her cousins—and particularly with Cole—is a major source of discord. The overly protective Colt feels responsible for Addie's recent kidnapping, and he definitely doesn't want her having anything to do with the monstrous Isaiah.

     We never learn the who-what-why-how details of the Reapers' changeover from human to werewolf. Which side of the Civil War were They on? How could They have had such technology in the mid-1800s? Can the Reapers be sure that They were all destroyed?

     This is looking to be a somewhat derivative series with growling, snarling, sexy heroes and fragile-but-tough heroines. Click HERE to read a G-rated excerpt. Click HERE to read a spicy excerpt.