Death

• Author: Laura Thalassa 
• Genre: Romance/Erotica
• Publication Date: August 15, 2023
• Publisher: Bloom Books
• Series: The Four Horsemen #4

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloom Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: death, death of children, grief, violence, blood, gore

They came to earth—Pestilence, War, Famine, Death—four horsemen riding their screaming steeds, racing to the corners of the world. Four horsemen with the power to destroy all of humanity.

They came to earth, and they came to end us all.

The day Death comes to Lazarus Gaumond’s town and kills everyone in one fell swoop, the last thing he expects to see is one woman left alive and standing. But Lazarus has an extraordinary gift: she cannot be killed. Not by humans, not by the elements, not by Death himself.

She is the one soul Death doesn’t recognize. The one soul he cannot pry free from her flesh. Nor can he ignore the unsettling desire he has for her. And the longer she tries to stop him from his killing spree, the stronger the desire becomes.

When Lazarus crosses paths with the three other horsemen, an unthinkable situation leads to a terrible deal: seduce Death, save the world. A hopeless task, made worse by the bad blood between the two. But try as she might, Lazarus cannot stay away from that ancient, beautiful being and his dark embrace.

The end is here. Humankind is set to perish, and not even the other horsemen can stop Death from fulfilling his final task.

Only Lazarus can.

I had some high hopes for this book, since it is the last in the series. Maybe I was just expecting the author to pull out all the stops for this book, but I think I set my expectations too high, and probably should have adjusted them down based on the other books in this series.

Lazarus is a bit different from the other women in the series in that she has a touch of the supernatural to her—she can’t be killed. She presents a challenge to Death, but as usual, she wants him to stop killing everyone and he is unwilling to abandon his purpose. I liked that I wasn’t always able to predict what Lazarus was going to do, especially early in the story. 

However, Lazarus seems to be a less fully rounded character than her previous counterparts have been. Her entire existence is completely wrapped up in stopping Death, and one other thing I’m not going to mention because it’s a bit of a spoiler. But I think my biggest issue with the story is how repetitive the story was. Initially, there’s a cat-and-mouse style game between Death and Lazarus, but they quickly fall into a pattern of traveling between places.

There’s some good spicy scenes in the story, but they definitely didn’t feel realistic. While in the other books, the horsemen have some prior experience, Death is completely new to any human experiences. For Lazarus to say that Death is the best sex of her life, without her providing any sort of direction or guidance at all? Well, if that isn’t completely made up, I don’t know what is.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad story. But it wasn’t a great one either, especially after reading it so shortly after the other three. I would have preferred some more diversity to the story—maybe one set in Africa or Asia, and even going outside the box and giving us a gay horseman or even a female horseman! For what it is, it’s a solidly average read at the end of a series. Just don’t expect anything spectacular from this one.