DAEMONS INC: Eye of the Daemon; Eyes of the Empress

I heard the author read from this at Philcon 2007 and resolved then and there to use up the last two slots of my phone's address book to enter the book information so I remembered to get it. While I am not an aficionado of the genre, I found her plot, characters and dialogue to be compelling, and I look forward to reading the rest of the book! If you get the chance to go to a reading of hers, I highly recommend it; she is a dynamic reader and opinionated lady.

Depressed and terrified, Evan has horrific dreams which cause him to contemplate suicide. After allowing two close friends to drag him to a satanic bar (you can tell Evan doesn't make the smartest life choices), he soon becomes a captive of the evil barkeep Mac who is secretly a demon in disguise. Ritually tortured, he is eventually freed, and must come face to face with the frightening reality of who his father is and what he must become to survive. I admit, I picked this book up because of the cover. Two hot guys.. You can't go wrong, right? Well, the novel was a bit slow to start. It takes about 30 pages of Evan self-pity (and stupidity) to get to the good parts... The good part in my case, being Evan's Dad, Brad. Reading about Brad (no its not his real name) is perhaps the best part of the book. His evolution as a character makes it all worthwhile. Evan grew on me a bit too...But I found it difficult to like him.. Evan's not a bad kid... But he is a victim and for the first half (the first book), his victimhood and pain and abused nature did not make light reading. Which brings me to the final issue with this novel which kept it from being a five star read. At times the author strays off target and brings in a lot of minor characters at once. There are heavy amounts of dialog and I felt like the story strayed from the tight action-packed urban-fantasy package it had previously been. Any time Claudia and her brother were mentioned for instance... Just didn't seem to fit in the whole storyline that well. The dialog in particular between these characters seemed cheesy and overdone. Also, at times I felt the story lacked grounding. The demons can teleport wherever they want to be, and sometimes the real world and the demon world was difficult to distinguish and because the writer does not employ alot of environmental description, this makes this problem worse. Overall, a good story. Entertaining.

Anyone who likes a book w/action, heroes you can sympathize with, and simple entertainment will love this book! It is an Awesome book!