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Listening to this one now. I hope it's as good as the first one.
This is for my Demon square.
I enjoyed this spin-off comic a lot. It's funny (probably made me laugh more than all the volumes of Bone combined), and it's nice to see Bartleby and Smiley again.
John and Theodora are television psychics. Who actually find the thing that goes bump to the night – and destroying them, banishing them and removing them.
Until they find a well of darkness that is way way worse than anything they had encountered before. New dark forces are rising with both them personally under attack – and the entire world in the balance.
John and Theodora make an awesome team, backed up with John’s deceased, ghostly, yet still effortlessly awesome nana, these TV paranormal investigators are actually the real thing. Their battle against the darkness – along with the parallel story of a whole new dark force rising are both immensely creepy. The sense of this book – the darkness, the grief, the horror and (I’ll keep saying this over and over again) the overwhelming creepiness are really well done. It’s thematically excellent. So very very excellent – the whole feel of this book is perfect.
I love Theodora’s storyline the most. The way she was almost destroyed by the demons, saved only by her husband’s dedication and devotion – and new allies – and then turned it into an immense strength was excellent. I don’t want to spoil this which makes it so so so hard to adequately describe the awesome here – but she goes from bed ridden and helpless to the one leading the charge, telling the darkness who is boss and embracing a whole new existence of possibilities. She is awesome and her power is book changing.
The plot has lots of excellent action, twists and feel and is excellent to read.
I have that issue that keeps coming up a hundred times in the books I read – a kind of unsupported middle. We kind of waffle for a bit and lose any forward momentum. But as I read the words I’ve just written, I realise that it’s less about the middle of the book and far more about the whole book and the lack of coherent world building
This is the issue which stopped the book being a complete win for me. We have ghosts and demons and magic… and no reasoning behind any of it. It just is. No looking at what this is or how it’s done – and the whole story kind of rests on this. A large part of the plot rests on an elder demon who ends up in conflict with some other demons with no real explanation as to either. Our main character, John has apparently had a career of fighting the evil supernatural creatures but we don’t see that career. We have John‘s awesome grandmother ghost… but no history or background. John‘s wife Theodora is a medium – what does that mean?
I can’t stress how much this matters to the plot – those demons and what they do with Theodora is an essential cornerstone of the book. We have a whole organisation of people who are fighting against the darkness but beyond some references to the Vatican there’s, again, little information behind it.
I feel like we’ve jumped in on book two of the series and the introduction has been skipped. Which is a shame because, again, the plot and the concepts are excellent. The characters are interesting. The writing is excellent and has a whole lot of tension and epicness about it. It has an excellent sense of horror and creepiness (seriously, the harbinger of the dark demon is an excellently well crafted creep show on an epic level). Theodora is awesome, in charge and amazingly not in her husband’s shadow, a damsel despite her rescue or in any way secondary. There’s a whole lot of good here.
Diversitywise… well we have a moderately compact cast which is my preliminary shaky way of saying don’t expect a great deal. We have a gay man who is a personal assistant (LGBTQ servant trope!) who barely appears and is actually sabotaging his own relationship in the name of serving John and Theodora.
Theodora is, as I’ve said, repeatedly awesome and managed to avoid so many of the usual tropes, especially when the first half of book seems to be about her being victimised – but that is so wonderfully turned round and her strength becomes the primary force of this book. We also have ghostly Nana who, despite her brief appearance, manages to be absolutely incredibly awesome. Considering the small, tight cast, those two characters are notable.
It was supposed to be a simple exorcism, a publicity stunt to firmly establish John and Theodora’s thriving paranormal investigation empire in the public eye. But something went wrong, leading to an on-air massacre that unleashed a malicious host of demons and left Theodora catatonic, possessed by countless spirits.
John sets out on a desperate quest to find a cure for his wife, but his obsession brings him face-to-face with an even more terrifying problem: Theodora’s possession is only one piece of a deadly plot that is threatening the entire world. Because an ancient evil is about to make Earth its battlefield—and without John and Theodora’s intervention, there is no chance for salvation..
My Review:
This book is so busy because its author has packed so many things in this book that you get a blended theme of someone taking characters like Lorraine Warren and her husband putting them into a reality television show like Paranormal State and then placing it into the world of a show like Supernatural and mixing them all together in one place. That's this book. There are several areas where the author has potential to really expand this story but because there is so much potential and there are so many ways the author can really make it great despite its very few flaws I really liked this book and I am hoping for more out of this author.
My Rating:
Reviewed By:
Disclaimer:
Krissys Bookshelf Reviews received a digital copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts, comments and ratings are my own.
Source:
Received a print copy in exchange for an honest review from Berkley Publishing.
Note:
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The Archangel Remiel, now living as the human PI, Remy is struck low by an assassin’s bullet and apparently dying. Only Francis, Linda, Squire and his faithful dog Marlowe can try and bring him back to life before the assassins finish him off
While Remy’s soul is missing, to a different world, a different Earth – one where the worst has happened and the greatest dream of god and angel has been cruelly destroyed. He must find the truth in this apocalyptic waste land, try to find some way to fix the horrors – and perhaps learn a warning for his own world
I am torn about this book.
A large part of it involves following Remy into an alternate reality. No, let me reassess that – nearly every part of this book, certainly every really relevant part of this book involves Remy in an alternate reality. And… this is book 7 in a series and nearly all of the book was… kind of irrelevant to the overarching series? All the action, the people they met, the foes vanquished, the darkness faced is, at best, a cautionary tale for the main series. All of the action in the book is, at best, a warning for what could happen, a prequel, more than the actual story itself.
It doesn’t help that one of the main twists of the last book and another source of conflict is so… downplayed. The Bone Assassin’s attack on Remy seems to come from a very mundane source. I’m not going to spoil it, and it’s certainly an unexpected twist but, again, it’s another major plot element that doesn’t really seem to fit into the overall scheme of the series.
This gives me the odd feeling that the whole book is a time out, an intermission between the main plot, maybe even a new prologue for the new major plot line. I suspect the latter mainly because of the whole burgeoning storyline of the Unification.
The plot of God forgiving Satan and the Fallen Angels and reunifying the broken lands of Heaven, Hell and Eden is clearly going to be an immense, incredible storyline. Which may be the purpose of this book – while it’s not directly contacted to the main storyline of the series, it is there to tell us what is at stake. This is the worst case scenario. This is exactly what could happen if the following plot lines go wrong. This is just how terribly wrong Unification could go. This shows that, while Unification may be a wonderful, shiny thing, it also takes a whole lot of effort and there is immense risk connected to it.
This also shows that, yes, there are actually people out there who are clearly, eagerly willing to ruin everything, literally everything because of their own issues. As well as more than a few people who are not ready for the big bad guys to be forgiven – not at all. This all links nicely with Squire’s backstory and the suggestion that we have many many many many worlds have completely fallen apart. It’s all at stake here.
Then we have the b-plot of the Bone Assassins which also adds nice twist; so while we’re all foreshadowing the big mega awesome plot line to come, there’s also this nifty reminder that small things can ruin everything. It doesn’t take an epic force beyond imagining to completely ruin everything – even simple, insignificant little interactions can really ruin your day. Expect the epic, but don’t ignore the little things.
So, really, in terms of substantive plot? No, the alternate dimension means this book doesn’t add a great deal. But in terms of theme, foreshadowing and establishing a new paradigm? Yes, it most excellent adds to the series and sets up a whole new chapter going forward
And it does this with a huge world, an epic cast of characters, some excellent personalities and a really fun, deep and interesting core team. I like them a lot, I like the richness of the world a lot. It’s huge it draws upon so many Biblical myths and I could just chew on it all day. If there’s one downside to all of that it’s that there’s a whole lot to remember which means, especially after the gap between this book and the last – characters like Simeon, or organisations like the children of Samson can take a moment to remember. I rarely say this, but this book could actually use some recapping, it really could.
Unfortunately between the epic storytelling the epic world and the generally epicness that is this epic series, we also have a notable problem. Terrible diversity
Firstly, let’s look at gender. There are three prominent women in this book – Linda (Remy’s love interest) and Ashley (Remy’s friend) and an alternate world Child of Samson (who exists to establish a quick and sad relationship so she can then die and it be super sad – because a dead woman who gets to play child-like figure to the manly man is much more tragic than a man dying – that whole precious pedestal jewel trope). Oh we have some random bit parts (including a giant pregnant female monster that eats people which I’m not even going to touch except say “giant pregnant female monster that eats people”) but his is the crux. Everyone else is male. And it’s not just a case of a skewed male cast – their roles are blatant as well.
