Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, but flawed and sometimes confusing, April 5, 2000
The premise of the book -- that Evan, half-daemon/half human, his father (a daemon), and his cousing (also a daemon) run a more-than-your-average detective agency -- has potential. What prevents this book from being a truly outstanding work in this genre is the lack of a cohesive back story. The book reads like two books stuffed into one, with neither story (the first, how Evan, Badad, and Lirion came together; the second the current case they are working on) given adequate attention. The pivotal relationship in the book, that of Evan and Badad, is not thoroughly explained or explored, leaving the reader with lingering doubts and questions about the motivations of all the characters. In spite of what is missing, this is an entertaining book, with lots of action, and I do plan to read the next in the series.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a detective story, December 29, 2002
I was somewhat misled by the plot description, essentially "a detective agency, run by demons, investigates a kidnapping." I expected, well, something more of a mystery to be involved. But the identity of the kidnapper is never a mystery, nor is the mysterious Eye of Omage that the kidnapper claims to want for ransom. Villains explain their dark plans at the slightest prompting, and every character introduced, like in a Scooby Doo cartoon, proves to have a role in the Big Plot. Had I been expecting something more in the vampire genre of "sex, death, and angst" I might have been better prepared to like this book. The description of daemon thinking was interesting, and is what gives this book its second star, for me. One daemon explains: "You see a painting and feel a set of emotions you translate as appreciation. [...] If you could become the painting, love your own beauty, and then pass on, [...] then you'd be getting close [to how daemons experience things]." However, while the description of how daemons are different was interesting, by the fourth or fifth time it was explained in detail that for daemons, it's always now, I was ready for more plot, less exposition. Or, please, a little mystery.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining storytelling, June 30, 1999
By A Customer
This is entertaining reading. It's a story about the involuntary entanglement of other-dimensional beings in human affairs. The sex is a bit too graphic for my tastes, and I don't think the motivations of the daemons are adequately explained for one of the major actions in the plot. The portrait of the daemons' native society is interesting and well done, but it didn't convey to me a sense that I was looking at fundamentally alien thought processes in certain respects. But making aliens feel both truly strange and comprehensible at the same time is a very difficult art; the author perhaps errs on the side of comprehensibility. The work is not trite or cliche in any sense; I've never seen this subject addressed from this angle. Far too many recent novels are much too long for their plots, filled up with irrelevancies that bog down the story; that is, most emphatically, not among the author's faults; her craftsmanship in keeping the tale moving and exciting is superb. The sequel to this book, Eyes of the Empress, is dramatically stronger still.
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