The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy
Mar. 21st, 2025 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen has been on my radar for a while. I did a survey about a year ago, asking people for five-star book recommendations and someone suggested this. It's also been mentioned recently by a couple of the BookTubers I follow as something they really enjoyed.
So, I decided to give the audiobook a go - and I mostly enjoyed it.
It's a romance set in a fantasy world where people can be turned into zombies by errant souls in a wilderness area that's reached via magic portals. The towns surrounding the wilderness have a sort of frontier feel to them, but a lot of the specifics of the worldbuilding are quite nebulous and not really explained.
Hart is a marshal, patrolling the wilderness to protect people from the zombies and also catch criminals trying to steal the resources from the land. Mercy is an undertaker, providing a burial rites service for the town and for unclaimed people who die in the wilderness.
They take an instant dislike to each other for reasons that are never really explained - and the book opens four years later, with them barely tolerating each other when they have to do business together (Hart often has to deliver bodies to Mercy's business for burial).
And you can guess what eventually happens...
There's also some magical anonymous letter writing that complicates matters - though it also allows the introduction of my two favourite characters - the anthropomorphic owl and rabbit who deliver the post!
In fact, I loved all the peripheral characters - and all the aspects of Hart and Mercy's lives and stories outside of the romance. They have a lot of emotional depth and layers to their backgrounds and the way they interact with their other friends and family members is awesome.
I just didn't like the very contrived, very predictable, very abrupt, very tropey progression of the romance between them.
One quote did have me cheering, though: "He's so broken. And I can't fix him. I shouldn't have to."
Yes! This is the kind of attitude we need in more romance stories!
And I have to admit I did find the ultimate conclusion of all aspects of the book (including the romance) very satisfying.
So, overall, an enjoyable read, though I don't feel invested enough in the world to continue with the series.
So, I decided to give the audiobook a go - and I mostly enjoyed it.
It's a romance set in a fantasy world where people can be turned into zombies by errant souls in a wilderness area that's reached via magic portals. The towns surrounding the wilderness have a sort of frontier feel to them, but a lot of the specifics of the worldbuilding are quite nebulous and not really explained.
Hart is a marshal, patrolling the wilderness to protect people from the zombies and also catch criminals trying to steal the resources from the land. Mercy is an undertaker, providing a burial rites service for the town and for unclaimed people who die in the wilderness.
They take an instant dislike to each other for reasons that are never really explained - and the book opens four years later, with them barely tolerating each other when they have to do business together (Hart often has to deliver bodies to Mercy's business for burial).
And you can guess what eventually happens...
There's also some magical anonymous letter writing that complicates matters - though it also allows the introduction of my two favourite characters - the anthropomorphic owl and rabbit who deliver the post!
In fact, I loved all the peripheral characters - and all the aspects of Hart and Mercy's lives and stories outside of the romance. They have a lot of emotional depth and layers to their backgrounds and the way they interact with their other friends and family members is awesome.
I just didn't like the very contrived, very predictable, very abrupt, very tropey progression of the romance between them.
One quote did have me cheering, though: "He's so broken. And I can't fix him. I shouldn't have to."
Yes! This is the kind of attitude we need in more romance stories!
And I have to admit I did find the ultimate conclusion of all aspects of the book (including the romance) very satisfying.
So, overall, an enjoyable read, though I don't feel invested enough in the world to continue with the series.
