Downfall

Downfall (2014) Rob Thurman

I fully admit that I have been avoiding reading this book.

As the series has gone it, it has become more and more clear that Niko and Cal won’t outlive each other. If one is killed, the other will fall soon after, most likely in a horribly violent and destructive way, for they cannot live without each other.

And this book—like the first—starts off at the near end, with the brothers facing a thousand monsters and ready to die.

I’m not ready for their deaths. I mean, I’ve known for quite a while now that can’t live without each other, and that with their lifestyles (not to mention Cal’s monstrous heritage taking over) neither is bound to live very long.

But I wasn’t ready to read it yet, so this book has sat waiting for me to pick it up. Despite the fact that I love these characters and these books so much I typically devour them in one sitting.

And then when I started reading it a couple weeks ago, I saw the book switched between Cal and Robin’s point-of-view and then I was certain it was going to have a horrible ending.

So, yes, this book switches between Cal’s point-of-view and Robin’s. Yes, most of the books are from Cal’s point-of-view, but this isn’t the first time Cal has shared the limelight, but this is the first time we’ve spent a lot of time with Robin Goodfellow, and it’s the first time we really get to see the world as Robin sees it, as he has watched the millennia crawl by, and come upon two souls—Cal and Niko—again and again.

There was no therapy for lives millions of years too long…

But we also get glimpses of what Niko and Cal were like in previous lives, and some of those were marvelous.

Cal had invariably wanted the minimum skill to keep him alive, as he needed his other valuable time to drink, get in fights, chase women, sleep, and generally enjoy the hell out of life. I had to respect that if not out-and-out applaud it.

And Robin is amusing.

“Niko, first, it’s kind of you to not want to take advantage. If I were less manly, virile, and brimming with machismo, I’d go so far as to say it’s rather adorable that you think you could.”

But never fear, Cal, (despite everything) is still Cal.

That’s right, things were so damn dire that I was forced to convert to the metric system to indicate how fucking close my head came to exploding like a blood-filled cantaloupe.

Ah Cal.

Am I sorry I put off reading this? Fearing what would happen? No, not really. Because it was good to be able to read it all I one sitting, which I hadn’t had time for, previously.

Couple negatives—a couple times the editing seemed a little off—sentences took me several reads to parse, and I still wasn’t 100% certain what the sentence was trying to say. Which all struck me as extremely odd, as this felt very much like the final Cal & Niko book. But I was tearing through the book pretty quickly, so the issues could have been mind. I’m pretty sure a re-read would clarify.

And although some reviews I read complained about it, I absolutely adored Robin’s bits, and the trips down memory lane from his past and Cal & Niko’s other lives.
Rating: 8.5/10

Published by ROC

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