Rating: 3.5🌈
Based on the major arcana card Death.
If nothing else, that gorgeous cover, which plays into an element of the story, would have drawn me to the book.
But so do the themes of eternity, love, grief, mourning,fated mates, and death as they play out interestingly over the course of B. Ripley’s Death Song, another in the series, Tales of the Tarot.
While I’m not sure if all the storylines and components end up working smoothly together or feeling as though they were throughly understood or well defined at the end of the story, it’s interesting and written in such a manner that I was invested right to the finish.
The haunted artist, Charlie, who’s compelled nightly to paint the same subjects, is especially endearing. If anything, the author fashioned this character with an over abundance of traits and unusual features that threatened to overwhelm his storyline and the poignant nature of his situation. Charlie is this, and this, and wait, Charlie’s this too. And somewhere along the way, parts of his narrative gets lost or overlooked in the process of developing one of the newer aspects of the storyline.
It’s a shame, because Charlie’s story, at its baseline, is easily one of the most powerful and emotionally compelling. A artist paints the same character over and over because he has no choice.
Rex, the subject matter, is also a great character, one that also gets the kitchen sink treatment. Everything gets attached to him as well, his haunted, savage past, a found family and his current life that’s not exactly clearly defined. I enjoyed his relationship with Charlie.
However, Ripley is using this to launch a new series. So Charlie and Rex’s story turns into something muddled and confusing by the end.
There’s missing souls (this is a major question for me), Reapers, werewolves, dropped storylines, and, imo, while I enjoyed the romance, the initial potential and plot offering was never obtained.
So there’s a continuation of this series with the same characters with a book called Finn to come.
Death Song (Tales from the Tarot story) by B. Ripley was a good read but the author tried to jam it into too many different slots. One for the first book in a series so it needed lots of foundation information and extraneous details (characters), and one standalone book in a multi-author series. I’m just not sure it was great in either category.
Read it and decide for yourself.
Cover art: Fae Quin
Cover design: Amanda Meuwissen
Tales from the Tarot is a massive multi-author paranormal & fantasy MM romance collaboration. These 22 books, each by a different author, highlight the Major Arcana cards in a traditional Tarot deck – with some liberties taken, such as The Empress card being The Consort, for an all MM or gay romance focus.
Tales from the Tarot- 22 books
🔷 Where Fools Have Tread by Jennifer Cody❤️
🔷The Magician’s Heart by J.P. Jackson
🔷Cleric of Desire by Amanda Meuwissen❤️
🔷The Nephilim’s Touch by Morgan Lysand
🔷King of Hollywood by Fae Quin
🔷My Minotaur Daddy: An MM Romantasy by Laura Lascarso
🔷Across Space and Time by Kit Barrie
🔷Chariot of Souls by Morgan Mason
🔷By Rude Strength ❤️by K.L. Hiers
🔷Found in Obscurity by A. M. Rose
🔷Twisted Fates by Adam J. Ridley
🔷No Justice for the Damned by Hellie Heat
🔷The Angel’s Kiss by Nicholas Bella
🔷Death Song by B. Ripley
🔷Arcanum by Ashlyn Drewek
🔷The Devil’s Dilemma by Alex J. Adams
🔷Camelot’s Tower by Brooke Matthews
🔷A Highland Gargoyle’s Lucky Star
by Chloe Archer
🔷Trust in the Moon by Delaney Rain
🔷Raising the Sun by Eryn Hawk
🔷Zero Judgment by Kota Quinn
🔷The End of the World by Drake LaMarque
Buy link
Blurb
CHARLIE
Art is my livelihood, but the things I paint in the dead of night might just kill me.
Night after night, I am pulled from my sleep and compelled by some unseen force to paint the face of the man who haunts my dreams. I cannot resist the urge to capture his life on canvas, and the song of grief and mourning that he sings is forever stuck in my head. I don’t know who he is, but meeting him face to face feels like fate.
Rex. I finally have a name. If I can keep it together long enough to finish the commission he hires me for, I might be able to earn the rest I desire – and learn the truth of who I am and why my dreams of Rex include the pierce of fangs and a throne from the distant past.
Death Song is a standalone MM paranormal romance novel as part of the multi-author collaboration Tales from the Tarot. This book is based on the major arcana card Death.
- Publication date: October 3, 2024
- Language: English
- Print length: 226 pages
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 