Verdict: DNF
Explore the world beyond in this charming fantasy debut from Kim Alexander. Perfectly combining romance and humor with pure imagination, The Demon Door is a must read for all fans of modern fantasy!
The demon Prince of Eriis has turned out to be something of a disappointment. Rhuun is crap at magic. He can’t fly, can’t even shoot flames from his hands. His poor girlfriend has just about had it with him. It’s no wonder he drinks. All Rhuun really does is daydream about visiting the other world, the world without magic—the human world of Mistra. No one has been there for a generation, but Rhuun knows all about the humans. He’s got a book. It’s the only human book on Eriis, and he’s been studying it his whole life. The fact that his book is a bodice-ripping romance novel, well… it’ll make his adventures in the human world a little more complicated.
Tip #1 – Human women do not generally like to be called “wench.”
In Mistra, Lelet va’Everly could use a little magic herself. Parties and boys have lost their luster, and she’s desperate for an adventure. When a bizarre, exasperating, extremely good looking – and hot (literally) stranger shows up, he might be the person, and purpose that she had been waiting for. But why does he keep calling her a wench?
Sometimes love doesn’t just change your own world… it changes all of them.
I desperately wanted to like this book, I really did. The blurb alone hits the right tone of humour and promise in a demon prince that isn’t particularly good at anything.
Unfortunately, what the blurb doesn’t say is that the book follows Rhuun from before his birth, as it builds his history from his parentage onwards. I mean, it’s interesting in a way, introducing us to his mother, abandoned by her human lover, and bringing up a son who is half-human and who she doesn’t seem to much like most of the time – maybe that changes later but I am unable to finish this. This sort of background dump was a huge turn off, and coupled with the constant jumps in time, further interspersed with jumps and jumps in time to his father, on a different world altogether, proved frustrating.
The blurb promises an entirely different story, one that took far too long to get started.
I wanted to like Rhuun – he’s an outsider, he just so happens to be an outsider on a demon world. He seems likeable, but reading the book began to feel like a chore. And that’s when I knew I was finished. Not even the promise of Lelet, who sounds all kinds of fabulous above in the blurb, could convince me to continue.
The Demon Door was received through Netgalley for an honest review.
Oh damn, I hate when that happens in books! And I think that is what has switched me off from reading because it started to become a ‘chore’ and your right the blurb sounds interesting but not meeting up to the standards.