It’s the year 2446, and the first three Horsemen of Revelation’s Apocalypse have ridden.

Pestilence, War and Famine have changed the world into a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist. Commoners have few rights, and liberty is a distant memory.

Before the final Horseman is released, the Archangel of Mercy – Tzadkiel – makes a bold plea, asking for permission to find even one human who remembers the meaning of mercy and compassion. He is given 100 years, until Death will sweep across the land.

Taking human form and coming to Earth, he finds a world ruled by greed, hatred and fear. With time running out and Death growing impatient, can Tzadkiel find what he’s looking for… and how much will he need to sacrifice?

This is an intense dystopian read set in the year 2446, three of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have already wreaked havoc on the earth and before Death, the final horseman, takes his turn, the angel Tzadkiel visits the earth with 100 years to find a human who displays genuine compassion and mercy.

In this bleak world, it takes almost the full century for him to find such a person and has to go to extraordinary lengths to find her.

The world building in this novel is rich and far reaching, the narrative flips between three timelines; the present, a year previously when Tzadkiel is first captured and the lead up to the dystopian world the characters now find themselves in. On top of that, the perspective bounces between Tzadkiel the angel and Lourdes, the servant girl.

This book was brutally violent in terms of torture and sexual assault, though the assault itself isn’t sexually graphic, the lead up and after effects are visceral. It wasn’t gratuitous but highlighted the true importance of mercy in a world that has so little. Lourdes, the servant girl, was my favourite character. She can be quite slow on the uptake but she willingly puts herself in the path of danger to ease the suffering of others for no other reason than it being the right thing to do.

The author leaned towards formal language to set the scene in this book, which, coupled with the slower pace of some of the timelines, did make the book harder going in places but overall this book was a winner for me and I’ve already downloaded the sequel on Kindle Unlimited.