Daemonbreaker - Jude Reid

[theSpirea]

I've enjoyed all of Reid's crime short stories, and her debut novel Ashes of Cadia was pretty decent— a bit too simple and predictable, but still enjoyable, especially for someone's first full-length novel.

I'm sad to say the quality dropped significantly in Daemonbreaker. It's a short novel (56K words, whereas your typical BL novel is around 90K–110K), so at least the suffering didn’t last long. It's heavy on action, which leaves very little room to develop any of the characters within the already limited word count. You could say there are three 'main' characters, but they’re all one-dimensional, with only one to two pages of background info. If any other character is introduced—and by introduced, I mean they're named—you immediately know that character is going to die.

The story isn't any better: your typical, generic 40K plot with no mystery, no secrets, no twists. This could easily have been an average novella. The writing is solid—still better than any SoB book by Danie Ware—but ultimately pointless and forgettable. I can’t give it more than 5/10, and even that feels generous. Now I’m hesitant to read Morvenn Vahl.

 

The majority of the book is basically this:

Chainswords screamed through unnatural flesh. Aveline’s mace crushed a misshapen skull to pulp – she kicked the body aside, and cleaved into the next.

Her eyes were open as she slid back to the ground, her expression dazed, the right side of her face, shoulder, and arm crushed to a bloody pulp. 

‘The God-Emperor’s mercy is more than they deserve,’ Aveline said, smashing another skull to pulp, as a hand lashed out of the darkness and locked onto Gwynnet’s shoulder. 

 

And every page has something like ‘Praise be to the God-Emperor!’ or ‘God-Emperor protect!’. I get it, they’re religious nutjobs, but there’s a better way to portray that.

 

 

[The Scorpion]

I feared this would happen since I reead "Infernal Motives". That short story was all action no character. There was a twist, but it wasn't that strong.

 

The Reskard Purgation is a better omen for Morvenn Vahl, but I'd really love to see more sororitas stories by Kate Flack and Nicholas Werner if their shorts are anything to go by. The short by Ness Brown was also very solid.

[cheywood]

I’m a few chapters away from the end, but I think Reid’s prose and characterization throughout the novel are quite good. Her prose feels visceral and her characters don’t come across as prissy nuns. It’s just a very simplistic story that doesn’t do much to expand the setting or get one interested in the Sisters. I still think it’s a good read, especially in a very weak year. Probably a 7.5/10 for me. 
 

Hopefully Morvenn Vahl is a more involved story, one that properly communicates the grandeur and scale of a High Lord’s existence. I like Reid’s writing a lot but I haven’t seen her properly capture the excess that is 40k, everything feels very small scale. I feel like we’re seeing that trend with a number of BL’s newer writers.

 

 

Edited September 15 by cheywood