Kingston Raine is an industrial thief and spy and is now up against his most challenging foe yet; The Grim Reaper. Not one to take death lying down (pardon the pun), Kingston has discovered a way to get himself home. Death himself, however, has other plans.

The blurb on the back of Kingston Raine is woefully inadequate in describing this particular book. While it is enough to draw the reader’s interest and get them reading, it unfortunately does a poor job of actually describing the real plot.

Kingston Raine is a fictional character of a series of fictional books. Through a series of convoluted events he is brought to “life” and subsequently “killed”, putting him in Limbo and Death’s domain. Desperate to get back to his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Kingston uses Death’s scythe to travel in to the land of Fiction and jump from book to book trying to get back home.

Confused? Yes, so was I at times.

Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper is, unfortunately, at times a convoluted and confusing book. The two separate major plot lines have little to do with one another and really would have been better off as two separate books. Jumping back and forth from one story line to the other left me as disoriented as I’m sure Kingston felt every time he jumped from one story to the next.

Confusing story lines aside, Lear has a very crisp writing style and dry humor. His characters are witty and smart, each having their own particular voice to add to the narrative. Special kudos must be given to Lear’s ability to create such interesting characters, both male AND female. Too often female characters are written as little more than window dressing, something Lear does not do. His female characters have just as much to add to the story as the male characters and they do it incredibly well.

While Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper could be a bit confusing at times, I found it enjoyable. It is supposedly the first in a series and it shows a good deal of promise. I will likely be keeping an eye out for the next books at my library.