A review by feralnebulous
The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid

3.0

Looking back on the first time I read this book, I remember being enchanted with the story and finding it intriguing to go inside the head of a humanoid monster. However, with my recent re-reading of this story, I found several issues that definitely drove my rating down pretty far. First of all, I found the writing to be heavy handed and redundant (if I hear Tyrus's hair described as copper colored one more time...). Most of the time, Nemesis would have a thought, then disregard it by launching into an internal monologue about how she wasn't supposed to have those feelings. It got old by the third time she did that. Another issue I found was that Sidonia was supposed to be this extremely influential figure in the story since she is the sole reason for Nemesis's existence, but she barely got any focus and even with so little coverage managed to have the least character development of any of the other main characters. In fact, I found Sidonia to be even more annoying than the classic bully stereotype, Elantra. It's pretty hard to beat that cliche. I found the story to be interesting, but eventually it descended into a romance that didn't really work for me, since it's mostly just Nemesis saying, "Oh, Tyrus, I love you but I'm not supposed to be able to love you because I'm a monster and also I'm less of a human than you and I can't stop reminding you of that because I'm internally monologuing about it every other sentence!" In my opinion, one of the only redeeming factors is Tyrus because he's the only remotely likable character. He has his faults, but I found he's one of the only characters that doesn't annoy me to no end. I still like the classic story of endless corruption and family treachery though, so I'd give this 2 1/2 stars.