Knowledge Aforethought

On Behalf of Death #2

by E.G. Stone

Acting as relationship counselor for Life and Death was not in my job description. Then, I got sent back in time to fix the problems before their relationship fractured apart…


My name is Cal Thorpe, and I work for Death as his marketing agent. Mediating between Death and Life’s marriage was never in my job description. I did my best until we met up with Death’s cousin, Time, at the theatre. Time decided I should try and fix the problems between Life and Death before they started, so he sent me backwards.


I ended up in Florence in 1494, right in the middle of the Renaissance. And one of the first people I met while there? Niccolo Machiavelli.


Add in a half-giantess named Charlotte, her time travelling journalist companion, and the fact that Death lost my soul and nothing about that trip began as I expected. Still, I had a job to do, and if I ever wanted to get back to the future, I needed to fix the problem before it even started.


Things, naturally, went downhill from there.

Genres: Urban Fantasy

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2021

About the author

Evelyn Grimald “E.G.” Stone is an independent author, editor, and linguist who has been writing, creating and causing vast amounts of trouble since a young age. When not writing, she is off musing about the workings of languages—both real and created—or reading and sewing. E.G. reads voraciously, much to the confusion of her two dogs and two cats. Weird, nerdy, perhaps a little crazy, she is having a grand old time writing, reading, editing, musing on language, and, naturally, continuing her endeavours in causing trouble.

Reviews

[Stefan Bogdanski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we are again, back to Elsewhere - and the feuding between Life and Death. Cal solved a murder in the first book, stopping a full scale war to break out between them, but the conflict is still there. So Cal does what every responsible adult in his situation would do: He goes Marty McFly and tries to fix things before they were broken (with the help of Death's cousin, a guy named Time).

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Read the interview with E. G. Stone
about the start of this series!
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No problem is so serious that it can't be made more serious by introducing time travel.

We get thrown right into the action, and right from the bat the novel is off with a great pace that keeps you turning the pages so fast, you could use the book as a fan for hot summer days.

Of course, that trip is full of problems, foreseen and not so foreseeable. The danger of breaking the relationship between your parents before it even started is a walk in the park compared with the scale Cal finds himself on. It's like the author thought: What's the worst that could happen? And then she took that and threw poor Cal smack into the middle of it. Like ...



Alright, I'm not going to spoiler you there. Let's just say that Cal meets a bunch of interesting people, from Machiavelli to vampires and a half giantess.

Needless to say, that's just the start of Cal's problems. He's out of his element, doesn't really know what's expected of him, and has no backup. He even manages to lose his soul! But he has something of a secret weapon that will help seeing him through: snark.


No one asked Yolanda, but she could probably have told you that going back in time is a bad idea ... regardless of your powers of snark.

Yep, that's right. This series was based on snarky comments from the start, but Cal is growing ever more into it. I love that! Cal as a narrator works great in this respect.

So, part two of the series. The world building continues to be really interesting, the characters are loveable as before, and it really felt like coming back to friends - the way a second book in a series should feel.

No doubt, this is a fine addition to this young series and just goes to prove my first instinct - that Elsewhere is going to be a hit. I stand by this remark. This is going to be great and will be a future staple of mine.

Looking for a new series to just have some fun? Dive right into it! 4 well earned stars.

You can also read this review on my Blog.

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the original INNOCENCE OF DEATH book, which is an oddball story of a marketing agent who finds himself transformed into Death's marketing representative. Well, poor Cal Thorpe never gets a chance to do any actual marketing as he's continually dragooned into doing other jobs for his master in the Elsewhere. This time, he's sent back in time by, well, Time and ends up in the Renaissance where he befriends Machiavelli and a pair of travelers who put him on the road to stealing a magical eye. Why? All so he can play marriage counselor to Death and Life. EG Stone has a lot of Neil Gaiman energy in her books with a feeling of a somewhat more down-to-Earth SANDMAN series. They're fairly low consequence and enjoyable books that I recommend for an afternoon's read.

I'm definitely going to read the next.