Desolation - Derek Landy

"Reeling from their bloody encounter in New York City, Amber and Milo flee north. On their trail are the Hounds of Hell – five demonic bikers who will stop at nothing to drag their quarries back to their unholy master.

Amber and Milo’s only hope lies within Desolation Hill – a small town with a big secret; a town with a darkness to it, where evil seeps through the very floorboards. Until, on one night every year, it spills over onto the streets and all hell breaks loose.

And that night is coming."

The second book in the Demon Road trilogy is I won't lie, very confusing at some points as there is a bunch of new characters and it jumps from one person's POV to the next. It's like you are reading a completely different story and I never had a clue what was going on, did I get used to this? yes but only after more than half the book. I want to note that Demon Road was 100 percent Amber’s POV the entire way through, now we have 4 POV characters. This is really jarring - most of the time when books add another POV in the sequel, one additional character is added. If it was just Kelly, it’d be fine. As it starts even at the beginning of the book I was struggling to get through chapters about brand new characters who were brought in out of nowhere.

Some of the new characters were amazing and I found myself absolutely loving them! Only thing is the gang really reminded me of Scooby-Doo & Mystery Inc. There was a dog, a shaggy guy with a beard, a hot lesbian redhead, Linda who reminded me of Thelma and Ronnie who would just be Fred if Fred was African American. They go about kicking demon ass and solving mysteries... just like Scooby-Doo but not revealing that the scary man's really the creepy janitor at your school, they are actually real demons. Character development for these sub characters is minimal the only thing said about Linda is that she is Chinese and had large breasts, this doesn't really make a character.

Milo & Amber have grown their relationship into more of a friendship rather than traveling companions. I don't know when this happened but I did like it. However what if you are curious as how Amber and Milo finally became friends? What was the turning point between partners and genuine friends?  What was their moment?

You don’t get one. Suddenly Milo and Amber are cozy enough to talk and tease each other about their (lack of) flirting abilities. Very friendly and cute and fun. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t feel earned. Just a couple scenes earlier Amber tries to engage in small talk with Milo and it fails completely because Milo doesn't know how to. It especially doesn’t feel earned because we get several scenes not long after this where Milo struggles to talk genuinely with Amber about things like her nightmares or other things she’s dealing with. Yet they have no problem gently teasing each other like old friends here?

Milo suggests Amber flirt with a boy in the restaurant and she says “not my type”. Which was the moment I figured out exactly what this book was trying to do. Amber is gay and Kelly is her love-interest. Now this was strange to me on a few levels.

1. Kelly is said to be about 19-20 and Amber is 16. Now 3-4 years is not a huge age gap however Kelly is far more confident in everyway while Amber is extremely insecure making the relationship feel quite manipulative.

2. At one point in the book Kelly and Amber nearly have sex however it takes 5 seconds to google the age of consent in Florida (where Amber is from) and California (where Kelly is from) and see that it’s 18 and see that this is not okay, even if there’s not an inherent sense of “wrong”.

3. I could talk about how much I hated the ending because Kelly is now apparently Amber’s moral compass despite knowing her for four days, because apparently their deep connection is enough to justify Kelly slapping Amber across the face, and because it was a great ending on paper ruined by the execution and the fact that the character who should have been the one lecturing Amber doesn’t say a single word in the entire last chapter.

I'm not going to complain about the tedious gore, and there a lot of it and I mean a lot, because that's what this series is about to a big extent but since I'm not a big fan, it didn't help. The book just felt very boring despite all the action. There was almost too much action making you anesthetized to it and getting very bored. The premise is intriguing enough that in spite of all my grumbling, I think I will want to see how this trilogy ends.

15+ age rating, so much graphic gore to a point it made me feel uncomfortable. Also quite a lot more sexual content then previous book.