The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

Megan Bannen
Completed 2/6/2025, Reviewed 2/6/2025
3 stars

This was an okay romantasy which I read for in-person book club.  It’s got zombies, although the nature of the zombies was intriguing.  And it has torrid parts.  However, I thought the torrid parts were rather pedestrian.  Compared to the intense scenes in The Fourth Wing and its sequel, it seems more like a Harlequin romance.  Still, I thought the book was generally entertaining albeit a little soapy.   It has two more books in the series which I probably won’t read.

The story takes place in a universe where the soul resides in the appendix.  Something has happened so that souls don’t go to the unnamed god upon death.  Instead, they wait around and take over a newly deceased body and reanimate it.  There are Marshalls destroy the bodies by disrupting the appendix.  Then the bodies are taken to an undertaker to be prepared for the afterlife.  Mercy is the daughter of an undertaker waiting for her brother to return from undertaking school.  Being a woman, she’s not supposed to run such a business.  However, she loves salting the bodies, reciting the rituals, and building the wooden boats that take the bodies to the afterlife.  Hart is a Marshall.  Since their meeting, Hart and Mercy have hated each other.  

One day, Mercy receives a letter addressed to “A Friend” from the magical owl mail deliverer.  She begins a pen pal relationship with the friend, falling in love with the idea of him.  Unbeknownst to her, the letters are coming from Hart.  Neither knows who the other is, until they try to finally meet.  Craziness ensues.

It’s an interesting take on relationships, although I think it’s been done in other genres.  It’s just that this time, the setting is rather interesting.  The characters are pretty well developed and the prose is not to bad, except for the sex scenes.  I liked Mercy who deals with carrying the weight of the business from her father who had to retire due to a heart attack.  When her brother Zeddie comes back, he’s no help.  He flunked out of the program and finished a degree in liberal arts.  Now he wants to be a cook.  Her sister is pregnant and can’t really help much although her husband is the driver for the company.  So Mercy is between a rock and a hard place.  

Hart on the other hand is the stereotypical brooding loner.  He is assigned a partner, a very young man with no experience hunting the zombies, called drudges.  He resents being assigned a partner but does take him under his wing rather reluctantly.  The young man, Pen, is actually more interesting, acting as a foil for Hart.  In a great little side story, he starts dating Mercy’s brother Zeddie.  

The book was a relatively fast paced book.  It took a little time figuring out the universe, though.  But I zipped through the last hundred or so pages in no time.  I thought the book in general was predictable, yet the ending was well-done.  The star of the book though is the setting and the mythology.  There’s just enough description of the old gods and the new gods and the migrating souls to keep you somewhat engaged.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It’s good, just not good enough to pull me into the whole trilogy.  In addition, I’d rather read Rebecca Yarros for straight romantasy, or gay romantasy, like the early works of TJ Klune, which I will return to now that I’ve finished this book.