Olivie Blake seemingly sprang into a writing career overnight with her New York Times bestselling Atlas Series. In fact, she’s written several stand-alone novels as Olivie Blake and several more “young adult rom-coms” as Alexene Farol Follmuth. Somewhere in there she developed gorgeous writing and a deep understanding of philosophy and psychology. Her language is richly poetic and wise, but always accessible. She reminds me of John Crowley mixed, perhaps, with the very best of fan fiction writers.

Like The Atlas Six, the story in Masters of Death is a complex interplay between multiple, layered characters. Most of them are playing a centuries-long game of loss and desire. It requires cleverness, planning, and a certain desperation. As the cover says and the characters often repeat—frequently enough that it becomes a sort of joke—“There is a game that Immortals play. There is only one rule. Don’t lose.”

Mortals should not play this game. They care too much. And they have too much to lose.

Viola Marek isn’t really a mortal any more, not since she was bitten by a Filipino vampire. Neither is Thomas Edward Parker IV, because he’s dead. He is haunting the Parker family mansion in which he was murdered, and actively preventing Viola, the vampire real estate agent, from selling it. Things really get interesting when Viola hires the medium Fox D’Mora to get rid of the ghost. Fox is a mortal, but he’s got connections, so he’s almost 200 years old. He is not, after all, a medium. But he is the Godson of Death.

This is a magnificent book, where immortal deities and demons from all religions co-exist, and every sort of love is possible, though some types are more permissible than others. There are archangels (Gabriel and Raphael are hilarious), minor guardian angels and soul reapers, Greek Gods, Norse half-gods, and the Demon King of Vice. And, of course, Death himself. They are bored. They play the game to pass the time to eternity and, if they are lucky, in order to feel something; anything. Even grief and loss is better than nothing. Mortals should not play with them. But they do. Sometimes, particularly if one is acquainted with Death’s Godson, it is required.