nikitanavalkar's review
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I really really wanted to love this one and it started out great, darkly funny and snappy like the author’s usual style, but then I started to struggle a bit with it? Like the world building got too confusing and too much for a 240 page book, so that it made the book unnecessarily dense. All the mythological and religion-adjacent info dump needed plenty of room to breathe which wasn’t possible in the page count. This was originally a newsletter serial which probably made it easier to digest in the smaller installments.
As for the characters, Christopher’s history as a deeply abused child and later s-x slave is bleak and sad, which makes his extremely subservient and all confidence lacking character make sense. I feel bad for him, I really do, but his behavior grates throughout most of the book and again, I feel terrible but this made it harder to get through the book. And if I’d be annoyed by a girl with those characteristics, it’s only fair that goes for a man too, fragile as he is. There’s a ton of growth for him over the course of the story, but you only actually see the changes at the very end, when it feels too little too late? Which is why I know the mythological info dump could use trimming. I liked him best in the epilogue when he’d finally grown a backbone. And at the spark he showed in the very first scene.
Demon daddy Sam is pretty great and his progression from thinking of humans as glorified houseplants to eventually be willing to die for one is heartening and adorable. The monster fvcking is pretty hot, if sometimes uncomfy, but Sam is so freaking considerate we love to see it.
TW: sexual slavery and abuse in the main character’s past, psychological abuse by parent, agoraphobia, blood play
As for the characters, Christopher’s history as a deeply abused child and later s-x slave is bleak and sad, which makes his extremely subservient and all confidence lacking character make sense. I feel bad for him, I really do, but his behavior grates throughout most of the book and again, I feel terrible but this made it harder to get through the book. And if I’d be annoyed by a girl with those characteristics, it’s only fair that goes for a man too, fragile as he is. There’s a ton of growth for him over the course of the story, but you only actually see the changes at the very end, when it feels too little too late? Which is why I know the mythological info dump could use trimming. I liked him best in the epilogue when he’d finally grown a backbone. And at the spark he showed in the very first scene.
Demon daddy Sam is pretty great and his progression from thinking of humans as glorified houseplants to eventually be willing to die for one is heartening and adorable. The monster fvcking is pretty hot, if sometimes uncomfy, but Sam is so freaking considerate we love to see it.
TW: sexual slavery and abuse in the main character’s past, psychological abuse by parent, agoraphobia, blood play
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Sexual content, and Blood
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