Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

The Mercury series was a really good idea.  Take heaven, make it a giant bureaucracy run by angels who are as far removed from the idea of god as we are and have them meddle in human affairs.  Robert Kroese should have just kept it one book, though.  The books went from fun and engaging to blah with some good parts to why am I even reading this.  Kroese had one good book in him and he should have stopped there.

“Mercury Rests” has only a few mildly amusing moments in it.  Most of its “comedy” revolves around people named after musicians having the lyrics to their songs thrown at them and characters snickering at other characters using the titles of movies in mundane conversations.  There is nothing clever about it at all.

The lack of humor could be forgiven if the story were at all engaging, but it is not.  We again have the apocalypse about to happen but this time it’s with a capital ‘A’.  Yay.  The story is fairly directionless, which worked in the first one because it was funny.  In this one, it feels more like someone trying to eke out one more book to fulfill a contract.  It might have been somewhat interesting if we hadn’t felt like we’ve been through it all before.  As it is, it’s part freshman philosophy at the end of the world, part Bible study, and part action-adventure movie with various random scenes thrown in to try to tie everything together.  There were times where I felt like I was being preached at more than I was reading a work of fiction.

Still, kudos to Kroese for producing a fascinating fictional character in Mercury with an intriguing view into the mechanisms of heaven even if it’s all only fascinating for one book.  Mercury will stay with me forever despite the fact that the books will not.