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eososray's review
3.0
This is a re-release of two books into one volume, with additional prologue.
The characters are very well thought out and interesting. Even when the story gets slow the chacters are enough to keep you reading.
Immortals, 7 sphere's to the world and the supernatural combine for a good read.
The characters are very well thought out and interesting. Even when the story gets slow the chacters are enough to keep you reading.
Immortals, 7 sphere's to the world and the supernatural combine for a good read.
brownbetty's review against another edition
3.0
I was not aware that Camille Bacon-Smith had written fiction. Those of you for whom this name means nothing will find this review to consist of 20% inexplicable nonsense.
Evan Davis knows something is different about him because he has dreams, every night, so terrifying he contemplates suicide. He's pretty sure his mystery father, a one-night stand, has something to do with it. His search for his father leads him into bad company, but on the brink of death, his psychic distress threatens to destroy two worlds, and his father comes to find out who this squalling half-mortal is.
(Why do my attempts at summing up often come out sounding like they should be done by movie-trailor voice-over guy?)
And then we skip to a year later, when Davis, Bradly, and Ryan have set up a detective agency which, alongside other matters, handles the occult "with discretion." The demons Badad (Kevin Bradly) and Lirion (Lily Ryan) have decided to stick around and see what this half-mortal thing is about. The demons are well done; Badad and Lirion are, in fact, constituent parts of their greater whole, Ariton. Ariton's invocation requires the cooperation of a critical mass of the demonic host, so he's more an association than a character; for the most part he's present only in the persons of Lirion and Badad Their relationship to each-other is kin-like, but Badad certainly has no referent for ideas like 'father' and 'son', which is what Evan wants him to be. He sticks around out of a vague disquiet, and certainly hasn't ruled out killing Evan, if it should seem convenient.
Looking for traces of fannish influence, I think it shows primarily in its disinclination to waste too much time on the setup, and interest in manpain. Even is besotted by Lily, but is she even capable of love? She's certainly not capable of monogamy, nor interested in it. He wants a father's love, but Badad's strongest emotion toward Evan appears to be a sort of possessiveness. (I see fandom perking its ears up.) And then Evan has to enslave them both in a magical binding for plot reasons. Will either of them ever trust him again (assuming they don't kill him!)?!!
I mean, it's not that sensationalized in the book, I'm just sayin'.
Warning! This book skirts around the edges of incest. On the incest-o-meter, it's about even with [a:Mary Shelley|11139|Mary Shelley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205347203p2/11139.jpg]'s [Book:Frankenstein], but far less embarrassed about it. Lily, who describes herself as 'cousin' to Evan's father, when using human terms, has sex with Evan on a regular basis; she recommends the experience to his father, who is forced to decline, having encountered human incest taboos before. Furthermore, three quarters of the people who Evan meets think his father is his sugar-daddy, including his mother, since she does remember her one-night stand well enough to know that ain't him.
If I had to guess, this book most closely resembles a certain Davis-Panzer property, but I don't really see any signs of serial numbers, it's mostly just in a few relationship dynamics. Contrariwise, if this book was a fandom, it would produce immense quantities of fic much more incestuous than the book.
Demon Eyes is an omnibus combining two books, [Book:Eye of the Demon], and [Book:The Eyes of the Empress]. I had read the latter, perhaps a decade ago, and enjoyed it enough to make a note to be on the lookout for the first one. This book has been slightly rewritten to make them fit together better, but it remains very much a book set in the '90s, to the extent that when someone recommends a 2000 vintage, I was very confused, wondered if they were drinking alcohol from 2000 BCE, wondered if they were drinking alcohol from the future, and then went back to see if my memory of the publication dates was correct.
Evan Davis knows something is different about him because he has dreams, every night, so terrifying he contemplates suicide. He's pretty sure his mystery father, a one-night stand, has something to do with it. His search for his father leads him into bad company, but on the brink of death, his psychic distress threatens to destroy two worlds, and his father comes to find out who this squalling half-mortal is.
(Why do my attempts at summing up often come out sounding like they should be done by movie-trailor voice-over guy?)
And then we skip to a year later, when Davis, Bradly, and Ryan have set up a detective agency which, alongside other matters, handles the occult "with discretion." The demons Badad (Kevin Bradly) and Lirion (Lily Ryan) have decided to stick around and see what this half-mortal thing is about. The demons are well done; Badad and Lirion are, in fact, constituent parts of their greater whole, Ariton. Ariton's invocation requires the cooperation of a critical mass of the demonic host, so he's more an association than a character; for the most part he's present only in the persons of Lirion and Badad Their relationship to each-other is kin-like, but Badad certainly has no referent for ideas like 'father' and 'son', which is what Evan wants him to be. He sticks around out of a vague disquiet, and certainly hasn't ruled out killing Evan, if it should seem convenient.
Looking for traces of fannish influence, I think it shows primarily in its disinclination to waste too much time on the setup, and interest in manpain. Even is besotted by Lily, but is she even capable of love? She's certainly not capable of monogamy, nor interested in it. He wants a father's love, but Badad's strongest emotion toward Evan appears to be a sort of possessiveness. (I see fandom perking its ears up.) And then Evan has to enslave them both in a magical binding for plot reasons. Will either of them ever trust him again (assuming they don't kill him!)?!!
I mean, it's not that sensationalized in the book, I'm just sayin'.
Warning! This book skirts around the edges of incest. On the incest-o-meter, it's about even with [a:Mary Shelley|11139|Mary Shelley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205347203p2/11139.jpg]'s [Book:Frankenstein], but far less embarrassed about it. Lily, who describes herself as 'cousin' to Evan's father, when using human terms, has sex with Evan on a regular basis; she recommends the experience to his father, who is forced to decline, having encountered human incest taboos before. Furthermore, three quarters of the people who Evan meets think his father is his sugar-daddy, including his mother, since she does remember her one-night stand well enough to know that ain't him.
If I had to guess, this book most closely resembles a certain Davis-Panzer property, but I don't really see any signs of serial numbers, it's mostly just in a few relationship dynamics. Contrariwise, if this book was a fandom, it would produce immense quantities of fic much more incestuous than the book.
Demon Eyes is an omnibus combining two books, [Book:Eye of the Demon], and [Book:The Eyes of the Empress]. I had read the latter, perhaps a decade ago, and enjoyed it enough to make a note to be on the lookout for the first one. This book has been slightly rewritten to make them fit together better, but it remains very much a book set in the '90s, to the extent that when someone recommends a 2000 vintage, I was very confused, wondered if they were drinking alcohol from 2000 BCE, wondered if they were drinking alcohol from the future, and then went back to see if my memory of the publication dates was correct.
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