Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well Written, Good concept but shame ablout the ending, 28 May 2009
I thought I would find this book enjoyable as it seemed to be aimed at the "Twilight" reader but after reading it didn't quite fulfil my expectations. Overall I thought it was a well written book with interesting and realistic characters and in parts was quite gripping. It was well researched with its references to monotheistic religious ethos and the history of Knights, Crusaders and Templars. However these did detract from the main story and became too obstructive. I even found myself losing interest several times especially towards the end.
The main theme of the book is Billi's relationship with her father and his excessive harshness towards her. He insists that she follows his pre-destined path despite her protestations. She is torn between duty, loyalty and her own unfulfilled desires. Billi is a believable and engrossing heroine but she finds herself in a world dominated by men. It's a disappointment and unrealistic that she doesn't have any female friends of her own age.
Billi is quite a well developed character and so is her father. Although everyone else seems to be too much of a stereotype! Kay and Michael (initially) both come across as Edward-Cullen wannabees!!. I thought the romance in the book seemed quite unnatural and contrived.
My biggest disappointment was with how the bad guy was defeated. I felt cheated and deflated by it!!. When you have an extremely powerful villain about to conclude his devious, apocalyptic plan, there needs to be a endeavour of the most heroic kind to turn things round!. In this case the heroism seems small scale and in part assisted by an equally powerful nemesis. It was a real shame as the up till the arrival of this nemesis, it was heading to a good climax.
I don't think this would make a good movie. It lacks in big-scale action, powerful drama and credible romance and is perhaps too dark for a mass appeal!
I also don't think this book will appeal to my friends and other teenafers. They may find it too dull, violent and over-filled with religious themes.
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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic - my jaw was on the floor throughout, 6 May 2009
I had no idea horror could be so entertaining and surprising. Chadda has given the Goth Lit genre a run for its money with this unique tale. The main character, Billi Sangreal, is relentlessly confronted by both internal and external demons in her journey as a warring but reluctant member of the Knights Templars in modern day cavernous London amid some of the goriest characters to inhabit teenage fiction for some time. Yet, she's a sweet, unaffected girl too despite her skills in weaponry and esoteric magic. 'The chill of other things' is ever present and the story rolls along at a manic pace with plenty of humour and twists and turns. There's romance too. What more could any teenager ask for?
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10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Promises much, delivers little - an unholy mess (minor spoilers), 17 Aug 2009
Having met the author here in New York at the Book Expo and read all these rave reviews on Amazon UK, I had very high expectations for this book, which may be why I'm reluctantly coming down so hard on it.
It's difficult to know where to begin since there are so many things wrong with this book on so many fundamental levels, but let's start with the most obvious one: the plot. Imagine someone writing a story about Watergate, saying that the President of the day was wrongly impeached, and then writes that Gerald Ford didn't deserve to be forced out. You'd think, `Wait up, it was Nixon, not Ford.' This book makes the same mistake, which makes me wonder what the heck is going on when a writer can spend so much time researching Templar history (and, incidentally, getting much of it wrong) but not actually read the Bible passages on which this story hangs.
In Exodus 12:12-13 it is God Himself who personally strikes down every firstborn in Egypt - man and beast alike. This is unequivocal, and even though many people wrongly assume it was the Angel of Death, you can't argue with the words in the Good Book. To think otherwise is to assume the reader is dumb, which is grossly unfair on kids today.
Moving swiftly on, the plot itself is simple, mechanical and predictable, with holes so big you could drive a truck through them. One quick example: the Devil possesses a weapon which can kill Jesus (who is also God - kind of defeats the object of The Resurrection, no?) and himself and *he hands it over to the daughter of his worst enemy*. The plot even manages to shoehorn in a MacGuffin in the shape of a magic mirror and a deus ex machina ending, as if it was written from a how-to manual.
The characters, such as they are, merely exist to move the plot forward; most are little more than cardboard cut-outs. If you've watched Buffy or seen the movie Constantine, you've seen this story told already, although with a lot more wit and panache. The ending is a huge anti-climax, again based on a deliberate (?) misreading of the relevant Bible passages in Exodus to declare a win on a technicality. The problem is, you can't spend a whole book dissing the power of God and yet at the final moment have one of His Rules wield more power than anything else in the Universe. It's one or the other - you can't have it both ways. You can't say God is weak, detached, impersonal and uninterested in the fate of mankind, until it suits the author to bring Him in to save the day.
The main problem with the characters is that they are all deeply unpleasant, particularly the heroine who spends most of her time sounding like that Kevin the Teenager character, always sulking and shouting, "It's not fair!" She's also a bully, unable to fight teenagers on the subway but has no problem beating up on a skinny kid. Biffy is also essentially a passive character. On five occasions she ends up in danger through her own stupidity but each time has to be rescued by a male character; this, and the lingering descriptions of her suffering, seem to show a misogynistic streak running through this work.
Also of note is the sloppy editing and numerous errors, which show all the hallmarks of many rewrites. Examples of spelling mistakes: "court marshall" (P.102) and "lighting storm"; examples of inconsistencies: a skinning knife on one page becomes a bread knife on the next; a character who is face down one paragraph is face up the next. The book is full of these kinds of typos.
Finally, and I am sure this is not intentional, this story is offensive to people of faith (not that many evangelicals would choose to read a book called Devil's Kiss) and to those with a brain. In one exchange, two key characters meet for the first time as "Hi, my name is Billi HolyGrail" and "I'm Mike Doombringer." I kid you not. Substituting SanGreal and Harbinger isn't clever; it's stupid because it assumes the reader doesn't know synonyms. If the reader does know, then what follows has been telegraphed from Chapter 6, rendering much of what follows boringly predictable.
Also, I find it interesting that a Muslim author takes a lot of pot shots at Christianity (characters who don't believe in God perform exorcisms, for example), Judaism and Hinduism, in an attempt to show that no one faith matters more than any other, yet pointedly refuses to include Islam. I don't get that at all. How can any story about the dangers of religious fanaticism only single out Judeo-Christians?
Ultimately, this is a story with a decent premise that, in the hands of a gifted writer, could have been exceptional. Sadly, in the hands of Mr Chadda, it is no more than competent. I wish it had been otherwise. Still, it does have its moments, such as the arrival of a key character resulting in the destruction of a church and a strong opening chapter. Unfortunately, these occasions are few and far between, and only hint at how good this story could have been.
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