Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Death Days 
AUTHOR: Lia Cooper
PUBLISHER: NineStar Press
LENGTH: 257 pages
RELEASE DATE: August 6, 2018
BLURB:
By day, Professor Nicholas Littman works as an itinerant professor at a small college in the Pacific Northwest. He teaches seminars on mythology and the intersections of folklore and magic in the ancient world. By night, he’s the local necromancer, a rare magical talent that has left him alienated from other practitioners.
All Nick wants from life is to be left alone to run his magical experiments and teach kids the historical context of magic without anyone being the wiser. Unfortunately, his family is sworn to sit on the council of the Order of the Green Book—a group of magicians dating back to the Crusades—and they aren’t willing to take Nick’s no for an answer.
As though that wasn’t bad enough, a coven of Night Women has arrived in town, warning Nick that there are wolves at his door he had better take care of. But what can one necromancer do when every natural and supernatural card seems stacked against him?
REVIEW:
Necromancer Nicholas Littman is used to having people look down on his night job. There are all kinds of magic out there, but raising and commanding the dead isn’t exactly one of the most popular (or common). But since he was a kid, Nick hasn’t really wanted to be anything else. Still, a guy can’t fill all the hours of the day raising the dead (not the least because grave robbing is best done in the shadows), so he spends his day-time hours teaching mythology and folklore classes at the local college.
When the two worlds start to converge, though, things get a bit hairy. Literally. Forcing Nick, and his TA/grad-student Josiah, to rush to find answers to questions that probably should have been left unasked.
I ran a bit late with this review, but I hadn’t noticed that it was coming out till about a week after its publican. Not having read too many books where the main character was a necromancer, I was innately curious about how this story would go. And for the most part it lived up to my hopes. I found both Nick and Josiah to be really interesting characters, and while I certainly would have loved to have learned more about them, there was enough given about their backstories for me to be satisfied…for now. I’m really hoping that a second book gets written. The ending left the possibility open, so I’m crossing my fingers.
The world building was a bit hit or miss, for me though. On one hand, I liked how curious it made me to know more. The magical parts of this world didn’t seem overly complicated, but they seemed to fit seamlessly into the more “normal” world that it lives alongside. There was enough left unsaid, however, that I think a second book wouldn’t be lacking for depths to dive.
There was unfortunately a bit of an issue with the fact that some of that information left unsaid had an impact on the story itself. Mainly in regards to why the fuck Nick is so against The Order and their desire to have him join their council. I never quite understood what his problem with them was. Other than it is a cliche that all magical councils in fiction turn out to be evil, maybe. Except, they don’t seem to be evil. Maybe a bit pushy, but Nick is basically screwing them over for no other reason other than what seems like a childish temper-tantrum, so I kinda get why they would be so annoyed with him. Nick is constantly blaming them for things that I honestly don’t think are their fault (the number one example being the shit going down in the basement of his house…which just happened to start after he fucked up something he really shouldn’t have. Yeah, I’m sure that has totally nothing to do with you Nick.) and constantly complaining about them, even though they do save his ass from time to time. If the book wanted us to buy them as a bunch of evil dudes, then there really needed to be some concrete reasons for it.
The two plots also had a bit of a jockeying-for-first-place issue in this story. I liked both the Josiah plot and the Basement of Doom plot, but I was never quite sure which one was meant to be the focus. The Basement of Doom certainly was the most interesting for me…but it never even gets resolved by the end of the story. And the stuff with Josiah–including the romance–was a lot of fun, but there really wasn’t enough focus there for it to be The Plot of the story. I ended the book happy, but a little unsure what the author was looking to say in this book. But while it lacked the focus needed to really bring it into fighting shape, but it gave us a decent show nonetheless.
This was a story that didn’t quite nail the landing, but the fall was a lot of fun to watch anyways. And no matter what I found wrong here, I hope that a second book is forthcoming because these characters have a lot going for them. The plot was kept at a decent pace so that I never got bored, and the descriptions were very well managed. It was a fun story that I think will be worth checking out.
RATING: 
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