The Demon Awakens

I half-read, half-listened to this one. I bought the series but didn't quite manage to get around to reading it, and then the audiobook by Graphic Audio became available so I started it off.

First off, Graphic Audio is a more cinematic take on audio book narrations. It uses different voice actors, and the narration is punctuated with appropriate sound effects, which mostly does add to the immersion. But this comes at a “cost”, in that where sound effects or dialogue will do, Graphic Audio will trim or replace the actual written words. Sometimes I have no idea what a sound effect meant, and sometimes the voice actors sound comical.

I most especially didn't like that Graphic Audio would also sometimes choose to insert their own words where the author didn't - the most offending (to me) were inserting dying words for one of the characters later in the plot - I felt that it drastically changed the mood of the scene. I just don't like the idea that Graphic Audio would play “director” in the audio books they read. Which is what made me half-read the novel - I would listen to it, then skim through the pages again later on, just to get a “truer” picture. I'll pass on Graphic Audio narrations - they're not for me.

Now for the book itself. I came in expecting a great story and deep characters, but I found great disappointment. Was this really written after the Legend of Drizzt?! I'm sorry to say that this book was really amateurish.

Being the first book of a new setting, I expected a bit of world-building. But all I got are several very generic human villages, one elf village, and one small- to mid-sized city that mainly just focuses on a tavern. Aside from a beautiful halo (northern lights sort of thing) and an order of monks (from where one of the protagonists hail) dedicated to the worship of a divine being, this world of Corona (as of book 1) is very bland. The only culture I got was a generic patriarchal human kingdom whose societal “feel” (content and seemingly prosperous) are at odds with its military (complacent and gilded).

One other thing that annoys the heck out of me are the names in this book - they're incredibly inconsistent. Individuals of the same village, city, or people-group can have wildly different sounding names and completely different constructs. Names are a pet peeve of mine; I just get irritated when authors just randomise weird-sounding names with no thought to world-building. I would guess someone else provided the names for the characters in the D&D books.

Despite monologues being heavier than actual conversations, the main characters are surprisingly one-dimensional characters. Their motivations are not always consistent, and the events that happen to them are too convenient. The situations that “happen” just happen because they need to happen. With the amount of firepower the elves had, they could've _easily_ saved Elbryan's village from getting massacred - yet they chose to save exactly one boy - to train him up. I guess the destruction of his home and family is to "toughen" him up? And don't get me started on how he managed to earn a horse's friendship and how he acquired a sword.How do I get an amnesiac barmaid to be a bad-ass sword-wielding soldier? Easy. Get her into a bad marriage and divorce her into the military! Right... because in a generic medieval society with whorehouses being so commonplace, it's very natural for the military to simply accept a very beautiful (the book keeps harping on it) ex-barmaid into its ranks. Oh, and this soldier suddenly develops a strong sense of duty to fellow man and country, just because! And this dutiful soldier, after barely escaping a rout, then decides to tag along someone who earned the moniker "the Mad Friar" who likes getting into brawls, just because! The only character that stands out enough is Avelyn, the monk of the order I mentioned earlier. This part of the plot started off a bit tedious, but it turned out to the best part of the book because Avelyn at least has believable and consistent motivations. Too bad the completely unnatural “Ho, ho, what!” ruins his character later.

And that's a theme for the book. The earlier chapters, where things are getting set up, feature better plot coherency and dialogue. It just goes downhill as those protagonists grow up. The pacing didn't help. It goes very slowly, then speeds up drastically as it approaches a milestone. This repeats several times, so it makes for uneven pacing. But there are nice reads here and there. Some of the action scenes are pretty good, with magic mixed up to good effect. But the magic system is a bit weird and inconsistent - sometimes they need to concentrate and “fall into it”, sometimes they just unleash it.

I've written too much on a book I don't like, so just one last bit: the titular demon was pathetic. All he does is bully his underlings and flee from straight-up fights. Despite oft-repeating how evil he is or how dangerous he is, he actually didn't manage to kill anyone directly (iirc), excluding his own underlings. And he's a complete failure at playing war. Why would you gather a horde of monsters that's already several times the size of any army the humans could muster (so the book says), only to have 1% of them conquer a couple of villages? Apparently, someone completely missed the memo regarding the actual manageability of a horde of tens of thousands of monsters (in terms of food supply and boredom management...). Conquering human cities is the only to sustain such an army. But the good guys are complete failures too - the way the heroes react to the discovery of a horde of monsters is completely nonsensical. And it leads to the biggest failure of all: going up against this all-powerful, all-evil demon. It's like the Lord of the Rings, only it concludes in about five chapters.

Obviously, since this is just book 1, it's blatantly obvious that there's a lot more story to this 5-chapter LOTR - it's just a really bad way to end the first book, and a really bad start for a new series.