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brettt's review
2.0
Back in 2005, Julie Kenner started a fun little series that imagined what it might be like if a woman who was definitely not an infringement on the copyrighted character Buffy the Vampire Slayer but who did the same sort of thing retired to life as a suburban mom but found her thirtysomething self called back into the hunting lifestyle. Carpe Demon established Kate Connor as a woman fully committed to home and hearth -- until an old man from the pet food aisle at Wal-Mart stalks her to her home and tries to kill her.
He was, of course, a demon and his attack signals that Kate's years of peaceful domesticity have come to an end. The wry and witty series ran at a book a year until stopping at 2009's Demon Ex Machina. There were any number of possibilities. Buffy ended in 2003 and as she faded from public consciousness pastiches based upon her lost their sales power as well. Kenner had also written up a very tangled web of major and minor plotlines involving Kate, her daughter from her first marriage Allie (and Allie's late father), her second husband Stuart, her old mentor, the Vatican-based corps of Demon Hunters to which she had belonged, and so on. It didn't really mesh well with the comic tone that had elevated both Buffy and Kenner's own series. And Kenner was writing several other series as well, some of which hit sweeter spots in the zeitgeist and probably seemed like better investments of time to both her and her publisher.
So Kate's story went on hold until 2014's Pax Demonica, in which Kate and her family travel to Rome to meet with the leaders of the forces fighting evil and learn what they could about all of the recent problems that seem to have coalesced around them. Kenner still has her gift for wry observations and gives Buffy creator Joss Whedon a run for his money in the quippy dialogue department. She's sketched her characters more than painted them, but they are well-formed and realistic sketches of people placed in very unusual circumstances -- you could see people acting like this (if they learned that demonic beings would sometimes inhabit the recently dead in order to use their bodies to do evil things, that is).
But the story is pretty thin, feeling padded in several places. That it seems to set up a new conflict for Kate to handle while not really resolving some previous threads doesn't make a reader feel particularly forgiving about second and third and fourth visits to some scenarios and situations. If there are indeed chapters yet untold in Kate's story some of them probably should have been in Pax Demonica in place of some of what's there; it does not at all feel like a book that had five years to cook.
Original may be found here.
He was, of course, a demon and his attack signals that Kate's years of peaceful domesticity have come to an end. The wry and witty series ran at a book a year until stopping at 2009's Demon Ex Machina. There were any number of possibilities. Buffy ended in 2003 and as she faded from public consciousness pastiches based upon her lost their sales power as well. Kenner had also written up a very tangled web of major and minor plotlines involving Kate, her daughter from her first marriage Allie (and Allie's late father), her second husband Stuart, her old mentor, the Vatican-based corps of Demon Hunters to which she had belonged, and so on. It didn't really mesh well with the comic tone that had elevated both Buffy and Kenner's own series. And Kenner was writing several other series as well, some of which hit sweeter spots in the zeitgeist and probably seemed like better investments of time to both her and her publisher.
So Kate's story went on hold until 2014's Pax Demonica, in which Kate and her family travel to Rome to meet with the leaders of the forces fighting evil and learn what they could about all of the recent problems that seem to have coalesced around them. Kenner still has her gift for wry observations and gives Buffy creator Joss Whedon a run for his money in the quippy dialogue department. She's sketched her characters more than painted them, but they are well-formed and realistic sketches of people placed in very unusual circumstances -- you could see people acting like this (if they learned that demonic beings would sometimes inhabit the recently dead in order to use their bodies to do evil things, that is).
But the story is pretty thin, feeling padded in several places. That it seems to set up a new conflict for Kate to handle while not really resolving some previous threads doesn't make a reader feel particularly forgiving about second and third and fourth visits to some scenarios and situations. If there are indeed chapters yet untold in Kate's story some of them probably should have been in Pax Demonica in place of some of what's there; it does not at all feel like a book that had five years to cook.
Original may be found here.
jayvall's review
2.0
I wanted this to be much better than it was. I suppose it might be time to just give up on this series since it's not what's making Julie Kenner money anymore and she doesn't seem to be terribly interested in writing it. The story takes place over the course of about 48 hours and while I enjoyed the family going to Rome, they never really got to do anything there. I feel like part of sending your story to Rome should be having the reader experience the sights along with the characters, and here, every time they tried to go somewhere, they got waylaid because someone was tired, someone needed to eat, someone needed to stop and look at a map, or a demon popped up. I also thought this would have benefited from more (better?) editing because I'm pretty sure Kenner got the time difference between Rome and CA wrong (if it's the noon in Rome, it's 4am in California, not 10pm) and at one point Eric popped up while Kate was having a conversation with Stuart. I'm not the closest reader in the world, so catching these mistakes just made me pay more attention to other things that might be wrong rather than just enjoying the story.
While I've enjoyed the previous books in the series, this one just didn't do it for me, and it makes me question whether I want to continue with it or if I should just stick with my fond memories of Kate the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom. Also, at 183 pages on my ipad, the last 20+ were all back matter. Is it really necessary to highlight every book in not one, but two series with multi-paragraph long blurbs for each book?
While I've enjoyed the previous books in the series, this one just didn't do it for me, and it makes me question whether I want to continue with it or if I should just stick with my fond memories of Kate the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom. Also, at 183 pages on my ipad, the last 20+ were all back matter. Is it really necessary to highlight every book in not one, but two series with multi-paragraph long blurbs for each book?
meredtihf's review
3.0
I like the plot of this book a lot. The problem was that it was so short. Where in her other books the twists and turns are thought out. In this book it's bombshell, move on... next bombshell. No processing. It could have been a lot longer and just as good with some some of the plot points fleshed out a little more.
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