The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan BannenMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
3.5 stars
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
“Hello, Hart-ache,” she sighed.
“Hello, Merciless.”
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy was a light fantasy romance with a touch of macabre that was heavily influenced (and borrowed directly from) by the movie You've Got Mail. It's a world that has Old and New Gods in their religion and Mercy Birdsall lives in the outer-reaches in Bushong trying to keep her family's undertaking business afloat. Think a barren, old west kind of town but add in fantasy and a touch of diesel punk as portals can open the Mist which walls off the land of Tanria. Tanria was created by the New Gods to imprison the Old Gods a thousand years ago but eventually the Old Gods were allowed to take their place in the stars. Twenty-five years ago the portals were invented and humans were able to enter Tanria, making the need for Marshalls. Drudges (think zombies) are created when souls that didn't get transported to their afterlife attack a human and inhabit, through the appendix, the now dead body. Drudges can't go through the mist but pirate portals, criminals illegally coming into Tanria to poach or try to steal the lands resources leave an opening for them and they end up on the human side and attack there, becoming a dangerous problem. Hart Ralston has been a Marshall for nineteen years and sees the drudges becoming an even bigger problem lately and it's causing him to have to see his least favorite undertaker more and more.
He had written a letter to no one, but someone had written back. And he liked this someone.
When I first started reading this, I felt extremely lost in the world, drudges, autoduck, equimares, and the whole religion with key IDs are relayed to the reader without much explanation. I kept thinking that I needed a primer about the world before I started but at around 30%, Hart gets an apprentice, Pen, who works to bring out explanations about Tanria and the world as Hart is teaching him, thus the reader. The thread that works to hold the story together is humans are given keys, these are like soul birth certificates. When someone dies, their key tells what undertaker they wanted taken to and how they want their body taken care of. There seems to be some Viking mythology here with viking like boats built for the bodies and funeral pyres. Drudges usually don't have keys and with the government giving special deals to undertakers to take on these burial services, Birdsall and Son, a struggling undertaking business, takes a lot of these on. This causes Hart to frequent Birdsall and Son more than the higher end Cunninghams. This plot gets Marshall Hart and Mercy Birdsall together as her brother Zeddie doesn't want to become an undertaker, their father had a heart attack and can't handle the work load, and Mercy's sister goes with her husband on deliveries.
“You're one of those hard-on-the-outside, marshmallow-on-the-inside types.”
When Hart first meet Mercy four years ago, he was having a bad day and kind of took his bad attitude out on her, even though he thought she was beautiful. Mercy dresses like a 1950s pin-up and is very tall but since Hart is a demi-god, he's even taller and Mercy has her own physical attraction to him but can't help giving him attitude back. They're both lonely but too blinded by their years of animosity to truly look at one another. Fortunately, Hart was having a hard lonely night and decided to pour his thoughts into a letter that he didn't address to anyone and dropped it into a nimkilim box. Add nimkilim to autoducks (cars?) and equimares (horse-frogs?) that aren't fully explained but it's the world's mail service with talking owls, rabbits, and other animals that serve as the mail deliverers. There's a few letters back and forth with insecurities, hopes, and feelings to draw Hart and Mercy to each other, we get a full chapter of the letters back and forth, and we get a secret romance forming between enemies.
I think we should meet.
It's around 40% that Hart learns he's writing to Mercy and there's a little bit of a meltdown but when Mercy has a near death experience and Hart rescues her, he lets himself feel those feelings he developed from their letter writing friendship. Mercy suddenly giving into her physical attraction to Hart was a little harder to go along with because she doesn't know he's the letter writer and so the emotional connection wasn't quite there for me from her. About halfway we start to leave the fantasy world aspects and move more into the characters as Hart starts to deal with his emotional pains of losing his mother young, never knowing his father, grieving his dog and mentor Bill, trying to connect again with his friend and now boss Alma, and allowing himself to love Mercy. This was an adult romance and we get an open door to the bedroom.
“Why are you being nice to me all of a sudden?”
“Maybe the better question to ask is, why were we so mean to each other to begin with?”
When Mercy and Hart were together and the romance between them was the focus, I thought the story flowed the best. The fantasy world aspects weren't as flushed out as they could have been, it made the world feel a little messy. Hart's demi-god aspects, healing quickly, being able to see souls, and question if he's immortal or not, the question of why more drudges are suddenly showing up, and Mercy's business struggles with competitors Cunninghams, eventually tie-in together but the Cunninghams whole plot thread was too much to the side for most of the story for me to really care about in the end, especially when you add in some of the criminal “mafiosi” aspects.
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
“But now you need to be careful for me.”
Side characters like Mercy's family and Hart's friends did add some warmth to the story but they were mostly one-dimensional. Mercy being mad at her family for not understanding she did love the business felt way too drawn out because she never told them she loved the business, letting them think she was forced into doing it. I liked how this was finally an adult fantasy romance but for Mercy being thirty and Hart thirty-six, they did not read those ages to me, they came off more early, mid-twenties; cursing and having open door sex does not an adult character make. I also had some problems reading Hart as a defining character, his voice didn't read that much different from Pen's. The ending gave us some answers about Hart and while there was a high emotion moment, I'm not sure I really got there because of how this felt lighter and skimming on the top of deeper emotions. The epilogue felt more like a happily ever after for Hart instead of Hart and Mercy because their romance was eclipsed by a family finally for Hart. This had a lot of ambitious, wild, and fun fantasy aspects but I'm not sure they all gelled and came tightly all together. This didn't quite hit the depth of emotions for me but I loved it for trying something new in adult fantasy romance and having it's sweet and zombie moments.
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