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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This was a fun read. Similar to The Conjuring movies.
Exorcist John Fogg and his wife, medium Theodora Knight take on what was supposed to be a simple job. A haunted house at Halloween. Little do they know the house is much worse than they ever imagined and they find themselves fighting against demons to save themselves and the world.
Exorcist John Fogg and his wife, medium Theodora Knight take on what was supposed to be a simple job. A haunted house at Halloween. Little do they know the house is much worse than they ever imagined and they find themselves fighting against demons to save themselves and the world.
-This was more a horror novel than fantasy. it got slow in the middle. I didn’t enjoy this the way I did his remy chandler series. I just couldn’t get into the characters.
I struggled so hard to finish this book. The concept was awesome, but I found the writing style lacking. It grated my nerves. Just glad it's over.
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The Demonists is a urban fantasy from Thomas E. Sniegoski, to be released in April. The story takes something everyone has seen and watched at least once in their life, a ghost hunter or supernatural hunter show and twists it. What if it’s real and what if something terrible happens because of these people poking about? Everyone has wondered about it, at least maybe I’m the sole weirdo who has so this was an unsettling and very appealing idea for me. John Fogg and his wife, a psychic medium Theodora are hosting their show when something terrible goes wrong and what should have been contained is released. Theodora is left in a coma and John is left in the center of a maelstrom of… let’s just say really bad stuff.
For me the beginning of this was the strongest part and then the story seemed to taper off and wander. I’ll be frank and say I read the first 20% then came down with a super nasty case of strep throat that kept me from reading for almost a week which could have something to do with this, but I had serious problems staying focused in on what was happening. I’d gain my footing back then my belief in the story would slip and I’d find myself rolling my eyes or growling in frustration. It simply stopped working. I was hoping for something fast, engaging, and maybe a little terrifying. I got that but almost as fast as it happened I lost it.
The overall plot for the story was something I am totally behind, and a few of the characters I really did enjoy. Our antagonist, The Teacher, has got to be one of the creepiest characters I’ve read in a while though his end game is something that I’ve seen done. Just because something is a bit of a trope doesn’t make it bad, and The Teacher was something that even in the wandering of the book I was sucked to. I loved his segments and they nearly always got a shudder out of me. I’m never eating candy corn again.
Most however, again, I had trouble believing. The more I’ve thought about it I think perhaps it was the frequency of the jumps. The story constantly leaps from one character to the next with little to no indication of the leaps – in fact the copy I had sometimes would start a new character’s view in a new spot with a simple paragraph break. Other times we would stay with someone past a double break. It made it confusing, and possibly aggravating.
For me this was disappointing, but it has promise. I think I’ll be giving it another go if I can find a copy in paperback (hopefully with some better editing) and when I can sit down and blaze through. If it’s something that does spark your interest, I’d say try it! Don’t try to spread your reading out, definitely get it for that long weekend when you’ll have the time to read. Fair warning as well, it may be a ‘read during the day’ kind of book.
I was provided a free copy of this book for review from NetGalley by the publishers, thank you! My review is my own thoughts and opinions and not swayed in anyway.
For me the beginning of this was the strongest part and then the story seemed to taper off and wander. I’ll be frank and say I read the first 20% then came down with a super nasty case of strep throat that kept me from reading for almost a week which could have something to do with this, but I had serious problems staying focused in on what was happening. I’d gain my footing back then my belief in the story would slip and I’d find myself rolling my eyes or growling in frustration. It simply stopped working. I was hoping for something fast, engaging, and maybe a little terrifying. I got that but almost as fast as it happened I lost it.
The overall plot for the story was something I am totally behind, and a few of the characters I really did enjoy. Our antagonist, The Teacher, has got to be one of the creepiest characters I’ve read in a while though his end game is something that I’ve seen done. Just because something is a bit of a trope doesn’t make it bad, and The Teacher was something that even in the wandering of the book I was sucked to. I loved his segments and they nearly always got a shudder out of me. I’m never eating candy corn again.
Most however, again, I had trouble believing. The more I’ve thought about it I think perhaps it was the frequency of the jumps. The story constantly leaps from one character to the next with little to no indication of the leaps – in fact the copy I had sometimes would start a new character’s view in a new spot with a simple paragraph break. Other times we would stay with someone past a double break. It made it confusing, and possibly aggravating.
For me this was disappointing, but it has promise. I think I’ll be giving it another go if I can find a copy in paperback (hopefully with some better editing) and when I can sit down and blaze through. If it’s something that does spark your interest, I’d say try it! Don’t try to spread your reading out, definitely get it for that long weekend when you’ll have the time to read. Fair warning as well, it may be a ‘read during the day’ kind of book.
I was provided a free copy of this book for review from NetGalley by the publishers, thank you! My review is my own thoughts and opinions and not swayed in anyway.
Originally posted at Vampire Book Club
John Fogg has long believed in the paranormal. He’s made a fine job of learning about and seeking out the things that go bump in the night. When he meets Theodora Knight, a self-proclaimed medium, he sees a real chance to bring his expertise to the masses. Jump ahead nine years and John and Theodora are married and have their own Ghost Hunters-type television show.
For their big Halloween special, they scoured hundreds of reportedly haunted places, and landed on a home in rural Pennsylvania dubbed “The House of Tribulation.” So far, the evening has been a wash. That is, until they actually stumble upon something. What happens next is John’s entire crew is killed, he’s injured, and his wife is host to umpteen demonic entities.
As John searches for a way to bring Theo back, it becomes ever clearer that the world as he knows it is about to change. The beings that reside in the dark are no longer happy remaining in the shadows, and as humanity remembers what it is to know true fear, the evil only gets stronger.
The Demonists reads like your typical good vs. evil story. It quite frequently brought to my mind The Exorcist. There were so many times I wanted to put down the book and get away from the grotesque vividness of the gory representations of evil, but I simply couldn’t. The pacing is really fast, and I always found myself wanting to find out what would happen next even though usually what happened next would make me a bit squeamish.
For all the fast pacing, however, I found that the timeline of events was probably my biggest problem with the book. I was just never quite sure of how much time passed between one event and another. The way the book runs it seems like John Fogg had an extremely bad couple of weeks, but then we would get reference, for example, to conversations that happened months ago as opposed to just a few pages ago. My mind had trouble wrapping around what were supposed to be slower progressions of time because the story moves so quickly.
Where the book really excelled for me was with Theodora’s character. Not to give anything away, but the book does not just focus on John trying to heal his wife. Although that is a main concern for John, there are road bumps and revelations along the way. Theo manifests, to me, as this awesome (although awesome may not always be the word I’d use to describe her) paranormal demonic superheroine. I’m hesitant to reveal too much because I think it’s really something to behold while reading, but suffice it to say, there is so much potential for her character that I’m excited to see what she can bring to the table in the next book.
Overall, The Demonists was really an introduction book. Preparing readers for what can be expected down the line in the series; what type of queasy, squishy manifestations of evil will try to wreak havoc upon the world. There seems to be a good team assembled by the end, I think they’ll be able to give evil a run for its money.
John Fogg has long believed in the paranormal. He’s made a fine job of learning about and seeking out the things that go bump in the night. When he meets Theodora Knight, a self-proclaimed medium, he sees a real chance to bring his expertise to the masses. Jump ahead nine years and John and Theodora are married and have their own Ghost Hunters-type television show.
For their big Halloween special, they scoured hundreds of reportedly haunted places, and landed on a home in rural Pennsylvania dubbed “The House of Tribulation.” So far, the evening has been a wash. That is, until they actually stumble upon something. What happens next is John’s entire crew is killed, he’s injured, and his wife is host to umpteen demonic entities.
As John searches for a way to bring Theo back, it becomes ever clearer that the world as he knows it is about to change. The beings that reside in the dark are no longer happy remaining in the shadows, and as humanity remembers what it is to know true fear, the evil only gets stronger.
The Demonists reads like your typical good vs. evil story. It quite frequently brought to my mind The Exorcist. There were so many times I wanted to put down the book and get away from the grotesque vividness of the gory representations of evil, but I simply couldn’t. The pacing is really fast, and I always found myself wanting to find out what would happen next even though usually what happened next would make me a bit squeamish.
For all the fast pacing, however, I found that the timeline of events was probably my biggest problem with the book. I was just never quite sure of how much time passed between one event and another. The way the book runs it seems like John Fogg had an extremely bad couple of weeks, but then we would get reference, for example, to conversations that happened months ago as opposed to just a few pages ago. My mind had trouble wrapping around what were supposed to be slower progressions of time because the story moves so quickly.
Where the book really excelled for me was with Theodora’s character. Not to give anything away, but the book does not just focus on John trying to heal his wife. Although that is a main concern for John, there are road bumps and revelations along the way. Theo manifests, to me, as this awesome (although awesome may not always be the word I’d use to describe her) paranormal demonic superheroine. I’m hesitant to reveal too much because I think it’s really something to behold while reading, but suffice it to say, there is so much potential for her character that I’m excited to see what she can bring to the table in the next book.
Overall, The Demonists was really an introduction book. Preparing readers for what can be expected down the line in the series; what type of queasy, squishy manifestations of evil will try to wreak havoc upon the world. There seems to be a good team assembled by the end, I think they’ll be able to give evil a run for its money.
The main reason I hated this book was the writing.
God, the writing.
It was just. So very bad. So melodramatic, clunky, awkward. It literally made me cringe every single page. It took away from and affected everything: dialogue, pacing, characters. It rendered the dialogue wooden and unrealistic, made the pacing come to a screeching halt even during tense scenes, and caused the characters to be one-dimensional paper cut outs.
Seriously, the dialogue here may have been more fitting in a particularly highfalutin epic fantasy novel that was trying hard to sound ~old timey~ but in a modern urban fantasy it just ripped me out of the story each time. The characters were all so, so bland. There's John, the main character, who's just your generic Straight White Everyman with zero - and I mean ZERO - personality except for how much he ~loves~ his wife, whom he always refers to as his ~love~ like we're in some kind of 1960s soap opera (and yeah, I could tell from the prologue that this book was written by a straight man, and sadly this became more obvious as the book continued - like, why does he comment on her sexy laugh and her sexy smile at the most random and inappropriate times?).
Said wife, Theo, is similarly bland, though thankfully much less melodramatic, and she spends the majority of the book possessed and having horrific things happen to her body (I'll give points for some great body horror though). Brenna, an FBI agent, is Tough and Strong but she's a woman so of course her backstory is that she's a grieving mother who lost her baby (why???????). There are some other characters whose names I can't even remember, because they all blended together into an amorphous mass with no personality.
The reason I kept going with this book is because I found myself actually interested in the plot. This plot is the stuff of my dreams! Demons! Possessions! Ancient entities being brought back to the world! Extreme gore and violence! B-movie horror sequences complete with projectile vomit! Cosmic horror! Secret organizations! I love this stuff! But it was all dragged down by the terrible writing and characters. What's more, even though I love this kind of plot, it's not exactly original, but that wouldn't matter if an author came at it from a unique angle. But sadly nothing about this book was unique or fresh or original in any way, shape, or form.
God, the writing.
It was just. So very bad. So melodramatic, clunky, awkward. It literally made me cringe every single page. It took away from and affected everything: dialogue, pacing, characters. It rendered the dialogue wooden and unrealistic, made the pacing come to a screeching halt even during tense scenes, and caused the characters to be one-dimensional paper cut outs.
Seriously, the dialogue here may have been more fitting in a particularly highfalutin epic fantasy novel that was trying hard to sound ~old timey~ but in a modern urban fantasy it just ripped me out of the story each time. The characters were all so, so bland. There's John, the main character, who's just your generic Straight White Everyman with zero - and I mean ZERO - personality except for how much he ~loves~ his wife, whom he always refers to as his ~love~ like we're in some kind of 1960s soap opera (and yeah, I could tell from the prologue that this book was written by a straight man, and sadly this became more obvious as the book continued - like, why does he comment on her sexy laugh and her sexy smile at the most random and inappropriate times?).
Said wife, Theo, is similarly bland, though thankfully much less melodramatic, and she spends the majority of the book possessed and having horrific things happen to her body (I'll give points for some great body horror though). Brenna, an FBI agent, is Tough and Strong but she's a woman so of course her backstory is that she's a grieving mother who lost her baby (why???????). There are some other characters whose names I can't even remember, because they all blended together into an amorphous mass with no personality.
The reason I kept going with this book is because I found myself actually interested in the plot. This plot is the stuff of my dreams! Demons! Possessions! Ancient entities being brought back to the world! Extreme gore and violence! B-movie horror sequences complete with projectile vomit! Cosmic horror! Secret organizations! I love this stuff! But it was all dragged down by the terrible writing and characters. What's more, even though I love this kind of plot, it's not exactly original, but that wouldn't matter if an author came at it from a unique angle. But sadly nothing about this book was unique or fresh or original in any way, shape, or form.
I have to begin with this: I love love LOVE the front cover of this book. It's what drew me to the book in the first place, and no matter what I think of what's between the covers, the front cover rocks. Amazing.
As for the rest...
This is one helluva creative story. Lots of action, lots of scenes that I can't say I've read/seen before, lots of stuff to keep me entertained. There's just one, slightly major problem, and I think I may look like a complete ass for saying what it is but that's a-okay with me: this book was WAAAAAY too short.
Yeah, you read that correctly. I think this should have been a 400-500 page book. Not because I like dragging things out, but because I like characters to be squishy and fleshy and real and unfortunately the characters in this book were almost completely flat. Like, Flat Stanley flat. I knew who each character was and I knew what role each character played and I had no problem telling them apart, but other than Nana who only pops up a few times in the book, I felt like each character was an executive summary of what the character was supposed to be. In the hands of an author like Stephen King, this would have been a 600 page book. Possibly excessive, but I guarantee by the time the feco-ventilatory collisions occur, you'd feel like you know the characters, like your friends are living through some shit, not some picture-in-a-newspaper person that has no connection to you.
This is not a deal breaker by any stretch, just a disappointment. I'm a weirdo: I have no problem with a book sacrificing action if it means more character development, so if about 100 or so pages could have been added to make the folks in this book more real, that would have pushed the rating closer to 5 stars. It's a good book, but I can see a great book in here begging to be released. Heavy sigh.
I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I honestly would love to get a book that tells this story from Nana's perspective. Like The Lovely Bones but for demonists. Some day.
As for the rest...
This is one helluva creative story. Lots of action, lots of scenes that I can't say I've read/seen before, lots of stuff to keep me entertained. There's just one, slightly major problem, and I think I may look like a complete ass for saying what it is but that's a-okay with me: this book was WAAAAAY too short.
Yeah, you read that correctly. I think this should have been a 400-500 page book. Not because I like dragging things out, but because I like characters to be squishy and fleshy and real and unfortunately the characters in this book were almost completely flat. Like, Flat Stanley flat. I knew who each character was and I knew what role each character played and I had no problem telling them apart, but other than Nana who only pops up a few times in the book, I felt like each character was an executive summary of what the character was supposed to be. In the hands of an author like Stephen King, this would have been a 600 page book. Possibly excessive, but I guarantee by the time the feco-ventilatory collisions occur, you'd feel like you know the characters, like your friends are living through some shit, not some picture-in-a-newspaper person that has no connection to you.
This is not a deal breaker by any stretch, just a disappointment. I'm a weirdo: I have no problem with a book sacrificing action if it means more character development, so if about 100 or so pages could have been added to make the folks in this book more real, that would have pushed the rating closer to 5 stars. It's a good book, but I can see a great book in here begging to be released. Heavy sigh.
I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I honestly would love to get a book that tells this story from Nana's perspective. Like The Lovely Bones but for demonists. Some day.