A Touch of Death by Rebecca Crunden {Book Review}

It’s very rare that I finish books within 24hours of starting them, and this was one of the cases. I couldn’t put the book down.

I had to get down to the bottom of the mystery!

A Touch of Death is the first book of The Outlands Pentalogy, and boy, what a rollercoaster read it was!

DISCLAIMER: This review could contain possible spoilers based on my opinions. All opinions and views are my own. I received this book from the author in exchange for a review.

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Plot:

Many years into the future, the remainder of humanity reside inside the walls of the Kingdom of Cutta.

The rich live in Anais, the capital city, hidden away from the disease and poverty that the rest of Kingdom suffers from.

Riches can only take you so far because breaking any laws can lead to execution. Only by the will of the King that Nate Antros, son of the King’s favourite, is spared after openly disagreeing with the laws.

When he’s finally released from prison, he disappears.

Catherine Taenia was born into a life of comfort and riches, and is in love with Thom, Nate’s younger brother. Nate’s actions reflect not only on his life, but on Catherine and Thom too. Catherine has never forgiven him.

When Nate returns after being missing for two years and makes a terrible decision, there’s only one thing to do: run to the Outlands where they won’t be found by the King’s guards.

They soon discover that it’s not safer in those lands, filled with rabies and mutants.

Thoughts:

I enjoyed the easy flowing language in the book. It was easy to understand and enjoy the flowing plot.

There’s swearing here and there, but it wasn’t added to just be there, but situation based which intensified the conversations between the characters during those moments. You could feel where tension and anger was at a high.

There is detailed violence in some parts of the book, which is fitting to the story as it shows the viciousness and the reality of the situation that the characters find themselves in. It also highlighted that life above the law has severe consequences. The punishment regimes are something else in this book.

The book is divided into parts and not chapters, which was unusual for me as I’m a chapter to chapter reader, but it wasn’t hard reading for longer periods of time because there was enough to keep my glued to the pages all the way. There are page breaks in the parts as well to separate scenes and time lapses.

There is insane character growth which I applaud the author for because it’s not often that you find such growth that’s direct but written in such a way that it’s gradual yet so visible.

I originally thought I’m not going to like Nate much in the beginning but as the story moved forward and I got to know and understand him more, I understood his purpose and why he is who he is, fighting for what is right, possibly at the cost of his life.

Catherine came across as a truly lady with judgemental standards and expectations set for only the highest of society’s but made a good turnaround as the story moved when she was faced with proper reality and not the sugar-coated lies she was living in.

Both characters showed sides that I wasn’t expecting and I love the direction that their characters moved in, emotionally and psychologically. I didn’t expect it much from either of them so it was a good surprise.

The ending has a cliffhanger, and if you didn’t know there were more books to follow, it would be a good ending to leave the reader to come up with their own conclusions. It could easily work as a stand alone novel.