BOOK REVIEWS - DEMON ROAD [spoilers] - Wattpad

BOOK REVIEWS

My thoughts on various books I read. Spoilers for some.

DEMON ROAD [spoilers]

Demon Road is about a sixteen year old girl named Amber, who discovers basically that her parents and their friends are psychopathic demons. They're actually hundreds of years old and long ago made a deal with a demon that each couple would have a child, and when the child turned sixteen they would drink its blood and kill it and then give some of their own blood to the demon as payment for their immortality.

So obviously it starts with her parents inviting over their friends for the grand ol' ceremony of murder, but one of their friends helps Amber escape and she goes on the run across America on the "demon road" with a guy called Milo.

Unlike Skulduggery Pleasant, which is based in Landy's native Ireland, the Demon Road series is based in America. I don't think it suffers at all for this. He's very good at writing for both audiences.

Overall, the books are, as with Derek Landy, very well written, very witty, and with brilliant villains. I love Milo and Amber's road trip, their meeting different villains, their fighting to stay ahead of both her parents, and the demon, who is now very pissed about the broken agreement.

MY PROBLEMS

The problem is that there are certain points where it's like the author was just too lazy and went with very cliche and tiring storylines. There are actually a lot of these, and it never happens in Skulduggery. Along with that, there's some plot choices that were a bit poor.

1) When they're tracking the (supposedly dead) serial killer Dacre Shanks in the first book, they meet a survivor of one of his attacks, whose sister and boyfriend were both murdered by him.

She tells them all about what Shanks did to his victims. How does she know all this?

When her boyfriend was taken by Shanks, the serial killer took the time to explain to him in length what he did to his victims and the boyfriend managed to write it down on a note, which the police found soaked in his blood.

That's just so convenient. I hate this stupid cliche, and I always have done.

2) I found Amber and Kelly's relationship pretty creepy.

Amber is sixteen years old and Kelly is twenty. I just find that very unnerving and just weird.

3) Killing off characters he didn't need anymore.

People die a lot in Derek Landy's books. In Skulduggery, you can count on at least one violent murder in every book, guaranteed. But towards the end of this series, he went on a bit of a killing rampage that just wasn't needed.

4) Amber's confidence problem.

Since Amber is technically half demon, she can grow scales and a tail and with that form comes good looks but also arrogance. In her normal form, Amber has low self confidence because she's plain and a bit plump, but when she's a demon she feels amazing. The only problem is that when she's a demon, she goes a bit psychopathic.

5) Glen.

Glen was this Irish guy who joined up with Amber and Milo in the first book because he had this curse and needed to find somebody on the demon road to take it off him. He was a really good character who especially brought out good conversations.

6) The Ending.

It felt very much like the author looks at his book, knowing his deadline is in about two hours, and he just strings a load of random crap together and calls it an ending.

I love his writing, but this series disappointed me. To any reader interested in this (I've spoiled so much of it, I'm sorry, but I did put a warning) you can read it if you like, because there are very good parts, especially the witty dialogue. It's just certain things and the ending that annoyed me.