My cheeks hurt from smiling through this delightful book. This one kept me hooked and entertained until the last page…

The Fifth Horseman introduces us to Emma and Mark, who become Death's accidental assistants. Follow along as they learn the skill of reaping the dead, while contemplating their own (late) mortality. This book was a fun little tale and I would definitely read another book by this author.

Jon Smith swings for the fences with The Fifth Horseman, and from the cutting critique of the odds stacked up against millennials, he swings a scythe.

Of course there is a long legacy of interpretations and personifications of “Death” as a character in all kinds of fiction. Smith’s portrayal of the character seems most closely related to that of Terry Pratchett in the almost universally popular series Discworld (the premise of becoming Death’s assistant recalls Pratchett’s own Mort!). In a few instances, I think Smith even references Pratchett by having the character speak in all-caps, but it is not kept up consistently.

We also experience some very Good Omens style horseman of the apocalypse, and one very clumsy Ancient Greek boatman, Charon. Our two main characters, Mark and Emma, run around reaping souls in Death’s stead, gathering tid bits of moral philosophy before hauling the deceased off to The Great Beyond. If you’ve ever played an Assassin’s Creed game, the format will feel very familiar to you.

I was at first intending to decry these structures as derivative and unoriginal, but as I continued to think about The Fifth Horseman after two or three days from finishing (always a good sign), it occurred to me that these things — while fun — where not really the core of Smith’s work. They may have been the stones mixed into the cement used to pebble-dash the walls but they were not the home within.

That home was the trials of our two protagonists and the judgements they faced on nearly every step along their journey in the afterlife as well as Smith’s answer to all the arguments millennials are tired of hearing. Interestingly, these answers are not always rebuttals necessarily.

For the last part of this review, I’ll talk about the humor. There are a few good laughs in this book, but I think I was hoping for more. I’m American, and many of the jokes seemed to involve English places and events so perhaps I just wasn’t connected to them in the way someone from the UK might.

Given its comic lens, and the characters it seemingly shares with Discworld and Good Omens, The Fifth Horseman feels like a natural successor to Terry Pratchett. Reading it with this expectation will be a disappointment for you, and a diservice to the book itself.

Instead, consider the problems and anxieties laid bare within the text. How does Smith try to play the hand delt to millennials? Do you agree with his interpretations? These are the questions that make reading The Fifth Horseman a fun and engaging read.

I'm not sure what I expected from this book but it wasn't quite what I got, I realise that doesn't make much sense but I'm quite certain you get the gist of what I mean.
The story is good enough the characters were a bit hard for me to like, I just couldn't get interested in them for some reason. Try it out though it might tickle you. Definitely an interesting story.

The fifth horseman was entertaining with wonderfully deadpan, British humour. The personification of death, war, pestilence and famine was well done. Emma and Veronique were by far my favourite characters though I enjoyed Mark’s outlook on life. A light hearted and introspective read. I did feel at some moments there could have been a little more showing rather than telling through dialogue but even with that I enjoyed the book and story as a whole and would read books by this author again.

We first meet Emma atop a dome high above Liverpool. You see she has decided to end it all by jumping to her death. But wait, her flatmate, Mark, has come to rescue her, while also declaring his love for her. One teeter later and they are both plunging to the ground and certain death. But they are caught by a mythical figure mid-fall. It is Death, The Fifth Horseman, complete with boney visage, huge scythe, and a pale, flying horse.

It appears a technical issue is preventing them from crossing over into the land of the dead. Death lets them stay at his house while he tries to find a solution. In the meantime, perhaps they can lighten Death’s load by becoming his unofficial assistants.

The Fifth Horseman is a fun comic romp through mythological fantasy. I enjoyed the plot but in particular the characters a lot. You meet all four of the horsemen (though War is a woman) and Charon, the boat keeper. All of them are tired, otherworld-weary, and having a bit of an existential crisis. It makes for many comic moments but also encourages pondering some deeper issues.

Overall, I loved The Fifth Horseman. It was refreshingly different from my usual reads. 5 stars!

Thanks to Balkon Media and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

3.5 ⭐️
This book was a completely different genre to what I usually read , but it still made an okay read.
The whole concept of death & the afterlife was interesting & the wit of the characters regarding those topics added to that.
Although, I was expecting slightly more dark humour that what was given based
*see TW*

The Fifth Horseman is a quirky lightly humorous fable about life/death/friendship and fate by Jon Smith. Released 7th Feb 2023, it's 321 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.

This is an unusual take on the afterlife. The author goes to pains to include the quintessential archetypes: Death, Charon, Cerberus, and the other personifications (War, Famine, and the other boys in the band) and sprinkle in some modern twists, including a French domestic helper named Veronique. Dropped into the middle of the Limbo afterlife party uninvited are Emma, who's chosen to be there, and Mark who was just trying to do a good deed and save Emma's life, and failing rather spectacularly.

The humour is mildly funny, but not overly so. The plot is quite meandering and I didn't find any profound insights along the way. There's a modicum of Benny Hill(ish) slapstick, but much of it is rather exhausted and trite, like giving hapless Mark a pale horse to ride in the form of a Shetland pony. There is a lot of suicide ideation, death (obviously), along with a surprisingly satisfying denouement and resolution. Spelling and vernacular are British English, but won't pose any problems in context for readers from North America.

Three and a half stars. Comparing this book to Pratchett, Gaiman, and (checks blurb) Aaronovitch does the book a huge disservice. This isn't them and suffers by comparison.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This book has an incredible premise, but I found it a bit lacking in execution. There are definitely moments of dark humor, which is my thing, but the story has no real forward momentum. The female MC is annoying, which made it difficult to root for her as an individual, and the protagonists as a couple. The best parts for me were just the descriptions and scenes set in the underworld; The River Styx, the Ferryman, and a dinner party at Death's house, to name a few. I think this book will appeal to readers of Christopher Moore and Terry Pratchett. 2.75 stars rounded up. Thank you to Netgalley and Balkon Media for the chance to review this advance copy. The Fifth Horseman is available for purchase everywhere you buy books now!

The Fifth Horseman had an interesting premise that immediately grabbed my attention. It was definitely a fun reading experience for me. I liked the character's dynamic and the humor is more sarcastic. I laughed out loud while reading it. I understand this book may not for everybody but it will find the right reader for sure.

I don’t often write two-star reviews, but this was a very disappointing read. I am a huge fan of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and I did not find at all what I was expecting to find in The Fifth Horseman.
I tried to persevere to the end because I read some reviews saying it got better in the last third of the book, but I felt like absolutely nothing exciting was happening in this book and the whole plot seemed a bit pointless.
There were interesting parts and the writing wasn’t bad at all, but I had a real problem with the misogyny of the book. At 39% in the book I had already highlighted five distinct parts that were problematic and the accumulation of those really put me off the story.
This book also needs serious content warnings as it opens on a suicide attempt and has very gruesome animal deaths towards the ends.
Although there were some positive elements such as the dark humor or the puns and Death’s house of death, this is not a book that will leave me a positive impression.

The premise grabbed me immediately but I found the actual story to be just OK. I enjoyed some of the humor and interactions between Death and his companions. I'll always have a soft spot for Charon. Emma and Mark were a little meh. Emma complains and is a little over the top but Mark tries to combat that with his positivity. The two didn't do much for me though.

All in all the book was interesting but not as attention-grabbing as I thought it would be and I needed a little more from the characters. The ending was interesting and a nice twist but also felt anticlimactic.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC opportunity!

Ever want to take over ferrying people across the river Styx? Then all you have to do is accidentally/on purpose fall off a tall building after declaring your love for someone. Easy peasy.

So in here we have Emma and Mark. Emma was having a really bad day and decided to jump off the building while Mark has been into Emma and tried to stop her. Both went over the edge.

That starts the hijinks of working for death. Death, who just wants to retire and loves the past.

I have to say that parts of this book was much smoother than others. There was a lot of humor yes, but it seemed forced? I am not sure if that is the correct word, but it's what I felt when reading.

I did enjoy this over all and I do want this in audio. I think this is a book made for audio.

4.5★s
The Fifth Horseman is the first adult novel by award-winning screenwriter and best-selling British children’s author, Jon Smith. When Emma and Mark fall off the Royal Liver Building, they would have died, but for Death on his pale horse scooping them up before they hit the ground. And that is due to some cheap, clearly shoddy hourglasses. So here they are, at Death’s quaint little white pebble-dash cottage, on the wrong side of the River Styx.

Emma had been ending it all, and her flatmate Mark was trying to save her when they fell. Now, Emma wants to be dead, and Mark doesn’t. It’s all academic anyway: Charon refuses to ferry them across, because a. body and soul, they’re too heavy and b. they don’t have a gold coin to pay him.

While Death tries to rectify things with the hourglasses, his assistant, Veronique explains how overworked he is. Death is tired and under a lot of stress “More people die, and he has less time to find the ones who are worth his reaping.” She’s organising a party to cheer him up, so soon enough, War, Pestilence and Famine arrive for the festivities.

While Pestilence and Famine complain about the state of affairs: medical advances, new technologies, well-digging and crop growth are reducing their own impact, War feels things have never been better, although she’s soon in for a bit of a surprise: treaties and agreements, who would have thought?

Veronique suggests that if Emma and Mark give Death a hand, maybe he will be persuaded to find a way to help them die (Emma) or have a second chance at life (Mark). Death reluctantly acquiesces: “Your success will be my success, and your failures will be your failures”, something with which Emma is too familiar in the job she just lost.

They go into training to become reapers. Scythemanship, horsemanship, sandmanship (management of hourglasses), anatmanship (reassembling spirits post-scything) are all studied or practiced. Eventually, Emma is riding a fine stallion (Princess Die) while Mark gets around on Stormrider (his Shetland pony, see cover art) and they’re getting a lesson from Death on how to make a tear in the veil between the worlds: they are apprentice grim, bringing in a set quota of souls on a trial basis.

One tiny complication is that, just before their fall, Mark confessed his undeclared love for Emma, and he hasn’t abandoned hope that they might live out their lives together. He feels they are a good match, each bringing their unique talents to their encounters with the spirits of the dead, be they sad, angry or disbelieving, acquiescent or resistant, argumentative, bent on delay or escape: between them, they seem to have it covered.

Will they manage to put themselves in Death’s good books, and what then?

There’s plenty of laugh-out-loud humour in this tale: Mark’s inner monologue and candid comments are often hilarious. “He was an organiser. A list writer. It wasn't on his radar if it wasn’t scrawled on a Post-it note. Plunging off a tall building and hurtling towards the street whilst embracing his roommate wasn’t even on this month’s additional goals”. The dialogue is often darkly funny, and other little inclusions like Death’s pantry, the Horsemen’s abodes, Charon’s coin tossing and Death’s improvisation with a tractor will likely amuse. A very entertaining read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Balkon Media.

This book wasn't my cup of tea. I felt in some ways it has been done before, a little like TV's Dead Like Me. There were some one liners that made me crack a smile but overall the book just didn't do it for me.

I enjoyed the basic plot of this story, Emma and John aren't quite dead, death can't quite figure out how that happened... maybe condensation got in their hourglasses? and they end up working for death helping him reap souls.
However, I didn't find it funny and I didn't like Emma, John, or any of the other characters, and everything fell flat for me in the end.

This was a no-go for me, unfortunately. I am a big fan of Gaiman and Pratchett so I had high hopes. However, the story just fell so flat with its odd beats of humor and lackluster characters. Suicide was addressed with such an unsympathetic tone that didn't land for me. The writing also felt very misogynistic at times.

For example, In this story, War is depicted as a woman and when our MC is surprised by that, Smith writes:

"War is what drives men to battle and to kill. There's no motivator more present throughout your history that has turned the cogs of hateful battle than the want of a woman."

Eeeeesh. I'm out.

Well, I finished it. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it, or even like it that much. Everything just kind of fell flat. I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters, the comic moments felt forced, and the story never really came together for me.

Part comedy, part social commentary, with a bit of dark satire thrown in. Emma and Mark find themselves in limbo as Death finds issue with their hourglasses that seem to be stuck. In the meantime, they learn how to reap souls to help out Death until their own fate is determined. At times irreverent, the dialogue is filled with one-liners and throw away lines. Readers of Christopher Moore or Neil Gaiman will gravitate towards this one.

“The Fifth Horseman” is a dark comic read that unfortunately for me more often than not missed on the humour front. When I originally requested this I had solid expectations and the start of the story did deliver on some of those, however as the book progressed I genuinely started to struggle with it.

I did enjoy elements of the story such as the depictions of the original four horsemen and some of the humour around death, dying and not wanting to face our ends. That said more often than not the humour didn’t hit for me and by the end of the book the plot felt too convoluted for me. By the time the big reveals and resolutions were coming around I was fairly “meh” about it. Elements of the narrative just didn’t sit well with me (I appreciate that may have been the point, but the waltzing off into the sunset rang a bit hollow for me). Overall, just not a good fit for me.