Friday, September 21, 2012

The Demon Trapper's Daughter by Jana Oliver

Read: September 13-20, 2012
read in a week
pages: 340

The Demon Trapper's Daughter (The Demon Trappers #1)

I have been wanting to read this book for a really long time now. I read the bonus short story Retro Demonology and was hooked. There was a lot of action with Riley, the young apprentice, and I was so sure I would love the novel as well. I was disappointed that I did not enjoy it as much as I was hoping to.

Book blurb:
It’s the year 2018, and with human society seriously disrupted by the economic upheavals of the previous decade, Lucifer has increased the number of demons in all major cities. Atlanta is no exception. Fortunately, humans are protected by Demon Trappers, who work to keep homes and streets safe from the things that go bump in the night. Seventeen-year-old Riley, only daughter of legendary Demon Trapper Paul Blackthorne, has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. When she’s not keeping up with her homework or trying to manage her growing attraction to fellow Trapper apprentice, Simon, Riley’s out saving citizens from Grade One Hellspawn. Business as usual, really, for a demon-trapping teen. When a Grade Five Geo-Fiend crashes Riley’s routine assignment at a library, jeopardizing her life and her chosen livelihood, she realizes that she’s caught in the middle of a battle between Heaven and Hell.

I really expected to get sucked into this series but even now as I read that above blurb it really does nolt give any idea of what the actual plot line of THIS book is. The blurb covers what happens in the bonus short story, which in reality was the first couple chapters of this book. A bit misleading really. If you are expecting adventures in trapping demons, well this might not be the book for you.

So the book is set in a future time, granted it is only 2018 but the descriptions seem possible if you are pessimistic in your current world view, for instance the gas prices well prices of everything has sky rocketed and people literally don't drive all that much. A lot of places seem to be abandoned and converted to other uses, for instance a parking lot has been converted to a market, Riley's home is an old hotel, and the kids attend school in old grocery stores and Starbucks buildings. The kids attend school not every day but once a week either morning, afternoon or evenings for like 4 hours. A half hour block for each subject with only one teacher for all subjects. The demons could be really cool but they really only get blah as they get bigger. The smaller demons are the cooler ones. I especially liked the little Klepto's who went around stealing pretty shiny items. Those were cute and they were not particularly harmful.

I expected there to be some scenes like the one in the short story of Riley capturing demons, but the couple of times that there was some trapping going on it was pretty tame and things weren't really keeping my attention all that well. The one big climax came out of no where. I'm not sure why it happened the way it did. There was absolutely no build up or tension. And my biggest gripe is there is no hint of any resolution at the end of this book. You would literally need to pick up the next book to figure out where things may go from here. It seemed rushed, like oh we need an ending and then I'm going to add another chapter  but explain nothing about how it will progress the story further. 


I got a bit disgruntled when just over half way through I started seeing typos. Things like missing words "a" "the" and "that". Words that would have helped make the sentences make more sense. I had to work at a couple sentences to figure out what the author meant. Also the kicker for me was the word keyed as "keep" but as I read the sentence I knew the tense should have been "kept". No matter how many times I read that sentence "keep" never once made sense in there. I also saw some missing quotation marks. I felt the last half of the novel just got sloppy in both story and in editing.


I'm not sure I can recommend this to any one. Its a great creative premise it just was not pulled off very well. I will not be continuing the series. It was sad because I bought this book and checked out the next two books from the library expecting to enjoy the first so much I would need the next two. I was sadly mistaken and returned them to the library first thing this morning. It was a fairly short book and to be honest it should not have taken me this long to read it. I had plenty of time I just lacked interest in the story and characters.


My best advice is : READER BEWARE

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