When I was done listening the first time, I was sure I liked this book and would get the next in the series, but I wasn’t sure why. The characters are a bit two-dimensional, the plot is a bit cliche, and the action is simplistic. The problem was I found myself staying up listening until I fell asleep and had to rewind the book to figure out where I’d fallen asleep. When I listed to the book a second time, I tried to figure out why it was so engaging.
I found that the simple nature of the characters was supplemented by slow character growth. When you are only a soul-sucking daemon temptress or an immature dizzy girl, it gives you a lot of room to build the character. This kept them understandable while giving them more depth as the book advanced. As I read the next books, it will probably become obvious if this was by design or accident.
As some character’s kept repeating cliches are cliches for a reason. They work. The socially retarded guy who doesn’t know how to deal with women is cliche because that is what it is. While the some of the plot is very formula driven with common components, there is enough new and unique ideas to keep it interesting. The cliches mixed with the more unique elements provide a balance so you have some parts that are expected followed by the unexpected.
The action is simplistic in that I read a lot of military scifi and this DEFINITELY wasn’t that. This is more of a guy on the street perspective of what is going on during battles, mixed with a magic wish list of weapons. Crash your super battle-suit through walls, use your magic shield to stop the killing blow, and tell what happens and not the tactics behind it. Some of the magic and super-tech advancements leave the story a bit lopsided, but I’m assuming that the enemies will provide more challenges as the story moves along.
Overall, I think it was a balance of things I would normally criticize mixed with some good writing and creativity that made the book a page turner. It was also FAST PACED. There was no time to recover from the last “bad” thing that happened before the next “badder” thing happened. This was a pleasant surprise that I bought on sale in May and didn’t listen to until September because I figured it just didn’t sound that good. I’ll get to book number two a bit quicker.