The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera

This book is the prequel to the brilliant They both Die at the End, and a terrible disappointment. It is more than twice as long as the first book but manages to tell only a fraction as much story.

In my mind there are two possible explanations for this book, either it’s a deliberate cash-grab by an author who couldn’t bother to put the work in, or (and more likely in my opinion) it is vacuous fan-service that cared more about opinions on the internet than telling a cohesive or impactful story.

The problem is the author covered his topic matter in great detail in the first book. This one just doesn’t have anything new to say. In the previous book every vignette, every chapter built on the themes with many interconnecting threads. I’m not sure what the theme of this book was – it was hard being gay in the 2010s? I put that with a question mark because there was too much modern attitude bleeding into the story to make that message really stick.

The shock factor of the first book, that is was a romance where the characters die, doesn’t exist in this one. There is also no tension because you know they are not going to die until the end. There was an effort to add tension with the missed names plot but it really didn’t land for me.

I think the book’s real problem was that there were no arcs in this. I don’t see how the characters were changed emotionally by meeting each other – in a way that would not have otherwise happened. Orion would still have lived on better knowing each day that this would not be his last. And Valentino was living exactly as he intended in moving to NY, just squeezing it into one day.

Honestly the most interesting character in the book was the Death-Cast founder and he mostly disappeared from the narrative after a few chapters; further his story is never resolved.

The reason I call it fan service is not just the appearance of Rufus and Mateo, who (8 years less in time and lacking some tragedies) are presented as exactly the same characters as at the start of the previous book. They have not been developed in any way, and the chapter with their narration added nothing to my knowledge of them from their book nor anything to this story either. The cameo alone would have been cute. But these chapters are pure stuffing.

Further this book still does not give any indication of how death cast works. If the purpose of the story was to explain or explore the magic system, which was very much the impression given in the first few chapters, this book falls down hard. And honestly what else is there to say in this world?

I know this is petty but I also want to talk about the sex scene, ‘cos it annoyed me and I think it reflects a deeper problem with this book. It was rushed. Almost down to bullet points. Like who would want to read that? It could not decide if it should stay off page (which is generally the preference in YA fiction) or whether it should go more graphic. I would have been happy with either if the author had just put some damn emotion into it. You can’t reduce a significant moment to 3 lines and expect the reader to believe you when you tell them how significant it was.

The book needed a lot less telling and a lot less of the author preaching through his narrators – seriously there were moments when Orion seemed positively omnipotent in his ability to infer what was going on in the heads of others.

The first book was so exceptional that it hurts a little to see it turned into something so vacuous. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with silly books or fan-service type work. The problem here is that as a prequel the author and publisher are building on the legacy of the previous book. There is a set of expectations that goes profoundly unmet in this one, and that is what makes it such a hard pill to swallow.

All in all, I kinda resent spending a week on this rather dull brick of a book.

P.S. OMG there are at least two more of these f-king books coming out!!!