Guest Review: Demon Bound by Meljean Brook

Posted November 11, 2008 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 3 Comments

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Among the Guardians, Alice Grey is known as the Black Widow—a woman trapped in a web spun by the demon Teqon. To save her soul, she agreed to deliver to Teqon the heart of the oldest and most powerful Guardian of all, or else be damned for eternity. After more than a hundred years, Teqon is calling in his debt.

Jake Hawkins is a novice Guardian whose gift of teleportation could be invaluable to Alice in determining her next move. But in aligning himself with her he never expected to fall in love. Now, their passionate flight to escape Alice’s damnable bargain is threatening both their souls. For they’re about to discover a hellish secret about the Guardians—something that will change their universe forever.

Wow. That’s really all I can think of to sum up the book 🙂

I’m not going to summarize the story, because Holly did a good job in her review. So I’ll go straight to my thoughts. I really enjoyed Jake as an hero. I’ve been a fan of his ever since he first appeared in the series… simply because he’s fun. He acts so “juvenile” LOL 🙂 Unlike the previous heroes, he’s relatively young and it shows 🙂 I admit I wonder what Ms Brook would do with him? Would she make him mature? Would he go through an epiphany and suddenly grow up? It wouldn’t have been bad necessarily, but I do think it would have been hard and it might have changed Jake’s character drastically. In the end, Ms Brook, or perhaps Jake, handled it really well. All in all, Jake was an interesting hero and a great contrast to Hugh 😛 I liked how he got along with everyone, how he always put his foot in his mouth and said the wrong thing. Although silly, he’s also very brave and loyal… and his love for archeology and history indicates that there’s much more to him than one would expect.

Alice Grey was an interesting character, but unfortunately, I didn’t connect with her as well as I did with Jake. Perhaps it was due to her personality, or Jake or even the whole storyline overshadowing her. She was also a very complex character and it was hard to understand what she was really thinking. I also had few questions about her at the end of the book… I don’t know if they were answered in the book and I accidentally missed it or what… For example, it was said that her gift “affected” her… but it was never clearly said how. She was definitively integral to the book, but not one of my favorite heroines in this series.

As for the storyline of Demon Bound… WOW. If you thought you had it figured out, well wait till you read about all these new twists!! Aside from Jake, that was definitively the highlights of Demon Bound. Learning more about the origins of the Guardians, the Guardians themselves and Caelum. I think readers have been waiting for this and it was great that Ms Brook answered some of the questions we had 🙂 It sure opens up a lot of doors and it’ll be interesting to see in which direction the series is going. What was great is how Ms Brook inter-connected the two storylines… i.e. the actions with Alice and Jake trying to find a way out of Alice’s bargain with the demon Teqon and how to introduce the new information about Caelum and the Guardians. There were some hints throughout the series, but I have to admit that the temples did seem to come out of nowhere.

I enjoyed Alice and Jake’s battle against Teqon and how they outwitted him. The ending was also great and I won’t give it away… However, it makes me wonder at the possibilities. I thought that Ms Brook paced the apparition of past characters quite well and didn’t overdo it. She knows how to put her foot down and limit the apparition to only on strictly-needed-basis. I’m also definitively looking forward to the next book to see what’s going to happen and how the Guardians are going to get organized 🙂

A warning however… although Demon Bound is quite shorter than most of the Guardians books, the storyline is once again very complex. Yes, I did get confused here and there… but nothing a second re-read won’t take care of 🙂

I’m giving this a 4.5/5 (A-). Fans of the series, don’t miss this one 🙂

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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3 responses to “Guest Review: Demon Bound by Meljean Brook

  1. I just got this today. I can’t wait to get started on it. The first thing I notice was how short it was. Hmmm, but then I opened the book and it is like really tiny font, LOL!

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