I really love Rachel Aaron’s books so if you haven’t seen me rave about The Heartstriker series, you can take a look through my old reviews for those and treat yourself to a cozy futuristic scifantasy with dragons.
I was all about this from the start since it opens with a talking cat. For those of you who follow me, I’m a little obsessed with cats, and I regularly try to tame feral cats that live outside and turn them into my house kitties (Rorschach is my latest success there). So, opening with a sarcastic talking cat is always a good way to get my attention.
This follows the story of a male witch, Adrian Blackwood, who is running from his “fate.” His clan of witches tend to offer up their male children to the order of the warlocks in exchange for being largely left alone in a hellish dictatorship of Gilgamesh the Dickbag. That’s my nickname not his official in world nickname. Gilgamesh and his bag of dicks rule over almost all the known magical world, from enslaving various races of demons, to lording over the warlocks, and ridding the world of witches except for the Blackwoods. Adrian is trying to break this trend of being turned into a warlock, one of Gilgamesh’s minions, and he’s run away from the east coast of the USA to the west coast to set up his own Blackwood Forest. He’d like to go further than that, but the roots of the Blackwood Forest always have to be able to touch, and so he’s sequestered to this continent. He’s got some serious power even though he’s not that old yet and he’s striking out on his own for the first time. Despite being powerful he knows he still needs backup and so he hires some body guards.
They’re demons. The body guards he hires are demons, lol. Hence the title. They a colorful bunch, too. If you’re someone who enjoys group dynamics when a bunch of very different personalities come together as a found family, this could really be your kind of thing. I think my favorite is the Void Demon who reminds me a lot of Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She is just so nihilistic and doesn’t understand the point of anything. Everyone’s going to die and be forgotten so who cares about anything at all? She chimes in to be depressing at the funniest times. People are super uncomfy around her though because looking at her is to feel the void calling — even Adrian is a little spooked but he does his best to be kind to her and appreciate her for who she is. Bex is the leader of the rag tag group of demons and I liked her a lot. She and Adrian are dancing around a romance and a good portion of the story is told through her perspective which really gave a lot of depth to the romance aspect of things. I don’t always enjoy romance, but I like slow burn, healthy, cutesy romances and this is that. Bex has a problem of her own to solve, too. She’s got a wound that won’t heal, and it’s not a matter of time or finding the right healer, the sword that cut her produces wounds that never heal, they will just keep reopening after healing… and so she has to drink an excessive amount of healing potions to stay alive. It’s only an inconvenience if she dies since she has the power of rebirth and reincarnation of sorts. However, with each time she dies and is reborn she forgets everything she knew before and has to start all over again and grow up from a baby into adulthood all over again. So, she’d really rather not go through the hassle if at all possible. I liked other demons and members of the group but to ramble on about each of them will make this an excessively long review. I do want to give a shout out to the nonbinary shapeshifting demon who is lovely in all of their forms. If you’re looking for trans and/or nonbinary representation there’s a character in this book I would say falls under that category.
I love, love, love the magic system in this book. I have a deep appreciation for ecology, ethology, biology, and all things nature related. It’s clear this author has an interest or is possibly trained/educated in this as well because it seems to be a theme in her books, albeit I think this book features it the most. Adrian is a woods witch and his power comes and is rooted in nature. He’s super conscious about the way he interacts with the world around him and is careful not to cause any destruction. I also love how the world building was presented. It was not always obvious what certain aspects of the world building were when referenced, and then later on it would happen on page and the reader would learn through showing and not telling what was being referred to earlier in the book.
I felt like the plotting and pacing were fantastic. Each time I thought I knew were the plot was going there would be an addition/expansion and the world would get a little bigger, and the plot would expand to encompass more of the world at large rather than being focused on one character and their flight from danger and by the end of the book the stakes were really high on a global scale.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a fast urban fantasy read that has a crazy amount of magic and plotting packed into one book. I will definitely continue to read this series. This book releases soon and I’ll probably just buy the audio anyway, lol. Thank you to Rachel Aaron for the ARC, and thanks to Mihir from FBC for putting us two together. I loved this book so much.