Debra Dunbar

This series has become a huge mess. The first volume already suffered somewhat from this but it became fully apparent in this one how bad it really is.
There is no consistency whatsoever. Everything changes just to fit the vision of how a scene is supposed to play out. Magic rules, personalities, goals, thought processes, everything.
I found myself strangely attached to this series at first because of the novel setup but the story doesn't go anywhere with it because everything is just made up on the spot and contradicts important stuff that was established before.
It's really disappointing because I really liked the idea of a Daemon with all its daemonic view of the world and this strangely missing moral compass but at the same time with the capacity to empathize.… (plus d'informations)

This one starts out great but doesn't live up to its promise.
My biggest gripe is how this book very deliberately implies that it is about a morally gray world without any subtlety.
And the problems the MC is faced with really are. I got a bit excited by this because this is very rare probably because it is so hard to pull off.
The only problem is that the book never actually deals with these problems.
It keeps pointing out the problem but it never finds any somewhat acceptable solution to it. Furthermore, the actual solution that gets ultimately presented is just a huge contradiction in itself that makes no sense from my viewpoint but more importantly it doesn't fit the MCs personality and what I would expect of her in the slightest either.
The book never actually attempts to deal with the root of the moral dilemma of the whole conflict.
Instead, the MC just decides that you just have to believe in the good you can see in people and that if someone just changes their ways anything, including mass murder, can be forgiven which is just ludicrous.
I understand that discussing such a political problem can have spicy implications some readers might strongly disagree with but if you don't intend to deal with the problem then don't constantly dance around it for 90% of the book.
Beyond that, the MC is just annoyingly good in general in this typical righteous YA MC fashion even though this isn't actually YA.
Another annoyance is how the book kind of just ends. The ending feels rushed and all the minor plot threads including the romance are kept dangling without a resolution and the wrap-up of the main plot feels half-assed as well.
I expect that a lot of the minor stuff is supposed to be bait for the next book but it is actually not obvious if the author just forgot about that stuff or intentionally left it open.

I for one don't intend to continue with this series after such a cop-out resolution to the one interesting major plot point that also got reiterated to death throughout the book.… (plus d'informations)

I enjoyed this one very much but it had quite a few unfortunate flaws.
On impulse, I would rate this 4 stars but after a more sober appraisal, I can only give 3 stars in good conscience.
The main reason I liked it so much is that it used a few cliches and formulaic patterns in unexpected and interesting ways or with interesting twists to them.
It's hard to talk about the things this book does well without spoilers so I just won't bother but be assured, they are there.
Now to the flaws.
There are an awful lot of coincidences piling up to make the entire plot possible which sadly makes it feel a bit cheap.
And I have to mention this one.

Sorry but that's just not how this works. Watch S1 of "Mr Robot" if you want to see a realistic depiction of how genius hackers might operate. You don't need deep technical knowledge to get this one right.
Now to spoilery territory.

The whole I'm going to kill you thing was immediately obvious bs to anyone familiar with the trope formulas but the mc should've caught on much sooner even without that genre knowledge.
She wouldn't have had to rely on suspicion but she could have at least mentally expressed the idea further than a few borderline hints that did not influence her decision making especially after miss werewolf caught on so soon.
[rambling]
Let me take a step back.
A common conflict that shows up in many books is the passing of time. Characters recall things at a level of clarity they really shouldn't be able to. The reader learned about facts only minutes/hours earlier in a distilled form which makes it seem recent but in the story a lot more time passed which should've worsened the protagonist's memory.
This is, of course, a problem the author has to balance with the annoyance to the reader who remembers much clearer and feels like facepalming about the stupid protagonist(s).
Here the opposite is the case. From the reader's perspective, it makes somewhat sense that she didn't catch on to the whole "I'm going to kill you" thing but if you look at how much time passed for the mc she definitively should have.
And it is even worse because even with this reader bias that already lessens the impact I felt like she should've caught on much earlier.
[/rambling]
Another annoyance was the second time they almost caught the rogue angel. You want to tell me the mighty Gregory wasn't able to prevent an imp from killing the rogue and stopping the pathetically weak and almost incapacitated angle at the same time? This is just one example of what I call cheap convenience.

I recommend this one for avid readers of the genre that enjoy the patterns but appreciate a twist on them here and there.
I have to give a fair warning for convenient coincidences and other cheap tools to help the plot along.… (plus d'informations)