Legacy of the Demon by Diana Rowland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is definitely a series for you if you love:

A: Insane powerups
B: Enormous changes in the world thanks in part to the efforts or mess-ups surrounding the characters we know and love and those we love to hate.
C: Hybrid UF/Epic Fantasy.

Much has been said about how this series starts off as a cool UF with a cop who can summon demons and how it becomes an epic nightmare between the demon world and Earth and now the Core with immense magical and racial reveals. It starts out usual and then becomes something really big, with Kara Gillian leading the defensive charge. Add a war between Demon Lords and the WORSE enemy from the Core and we have the stakes all the way up to utter destruction of both the Earth AND the beautiful Demon World. (Yeah, I know, it's beautiful. Get over it. ;)

Kara's abilities are on par with those of Demon Lords now and most of that is thanks to the capture and harnessing of the jerk that tried to turn her into a meat puppet. I really enjoyed how she grew as a person, too, while having her enemies in her power. She didn't succumb to a rage-filled torturesque montage no matter how much we as readers *MIGHT* have enjoyed that. :)

And as for action and worry and the twists and turns of WAR, the plot was fascinating and dire. Rifts opening up all over the world with demons pouring through is kinda bad, after all. The end is cool as shit.

My only complaint is probably a personal one. Maybe it's a lazy thing. But there's a lot of names that start with Z and enough weird demon names throughout the text as to give me a minor headache trying to sort them all out and keep the connection. I can understand the need for a big cast of characters when we're dealing with an incursion on a massive scale, but things like this can annoy to the point it pulls me right out of the tale. Fortunately, it's not bad enough to make me lose any real threads, but it is a bit of a WTF moment unless you're actually good at long lists of names along the line of the Iliad. :)

Regardless, the tale always focuses on Kara and keeping her as an anchor was an excellent call. I had a great time with the entire novel and I'm astounded at just how many changes have come over the worlds. War-torn Earth, indeed, with gigantic monstrosities lumbering across cities. Hell ya! Wooooooo! :)


View all my reviews