Strangely enough, for Simon Green, this book is a little slow in places.

I think with his style longer works tend to suffer - so that the Nightside books are a lot more readable than Deathstalker, for example.

Daemons is on the longer end, and has a lot of talking amongst the various Drood members jockeying for position as Eddie realises he needs to get some military training into his family.

He has taken their torcs, so he recruits some dangerous outside help to teach most of them to fight without armour.

No military genius, he makes mistakes and people die. Nastily, of course.

This leads to time travel and a surprising recruit as the second half of the book ups the pace and the super powered slaughter levels.

The usual plethora of bad jokes in a good way, too.

Call it a 3.25.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/01... ( )

I'm a big Simon Green fan, but so far I fee like his Eddie Drood series is a bit of a letdown. This book is entertaining and an easy read, but it feels like Green is just going through the motions. Green writes several series, and he often revisits themes or crosses his worlds. I usually enjoy reading him explore his personal obsessions in such an entertaining way, but there just doesn't seem to be much here that is fresh. He even drags in a character from one of his older series to have a starring role in this one (see spoiler below if the series/character name will help you decide whether or not to read this book). Unfortunately, I think it was an unusually flat character in that series and doesn't develop much here. I'm going to continue to read this series in the hopes that (like many of his series) it will become more intriguing as the mythology develops, but as far as this books goes, it's ok.

SPOILER!!!
The cross-universe character is from the Deathstalker series.
MORE SPOILER.
It's Giles. ( )

Every time I think that I couldn't love Simon R. Green any more than I already do, he suprises me. I love the Deathstalker tie-in (even though I've only read the first Deathstalker novel). This book was everything I love about Green and more. It was beautiful and horrifying. It had action, tears, laughs! I wish my words could do this book justice. But, just read it. Seriously. ( )