Book review: Satan’s Sword by Debra Dunbar

I’d read A Demon Bound back in March and enjoyed getting to know Sam and her friends and frenemies, so that helped push the second book in the series up in my TBR pile. Coming into Satan’s Sword, I was happy to see that the werewolf Candy would be returning, and to find out that this story would forgo the usual “choose one” romantic triangle in favor for a much more accommodating “fuck ‘em both” approach. (Take that, heteronormativity!) Sam’s imp character is just as wicked this time around, and some of her rambling moments are hilarious just like the first book. At one point, she turns a normally placid and emotionally reserved vampire into a bellowing cauldron of rage over…Doritos. It was glorious, really.

There’s a lot going on in this story, with Sam being asked by her brother Dar to fetch a demonic artifact from vampires, with each and every meeting leading to another wild goose chase. At the same time, Sam’s slum lord act is bringing with it duties she didn’t want when the squatting tenants begin demanding that she protect them from a killer who likes taking ears as trophies. She’s still having drama with the angel Gregory, who half the time can’t seem to decide whether he wants to kill or fuck Sam. Oh, and back in Hel, some very high-level demons are requesting that she come home for exclusive breeding contracts, demons so high-level, it’s hard to believe they’d want a “lowly imp.”

With 5 other books in this series and more probably coming soon, it may be too early to be guessing like this, but I get the feeling Sam isn’t as low level as she thinks she is. Is she a reincarnated higher demon now inhabiting a younger body? Or have her many years of energy collection on Earth given her an elevated power level without her realizing how strong she is? I can’t say for certain, but I do know that Sam isn’t all that she claims to be. Demons do tend to lie, but I wonder if maybe she’s somehow even lying to herself. There have been some clues that she’s more powerful than she gives herself credit for. In this book, for instance, she demonstrates perfect control in shapeshifting to other identities she’s Owned in the past, and both demons and vampires repeat something Gregory said in the first book, that Sam doesn’t leak energy like most demons do. That seems to suggest that she’s not just a lowly imp.

There was something that bugged me in this story, and that was the fact that in several subplots, other characters repeatedly mentioned things which are obviously important, and Sam just completely ignores them. Like the serial killer. Okay, when one or two crazy people are talking about some boogie man taking ears, it’s one thing. But when even her sane tenants and her hired werewolf security guard are mentioning the same killer and she’s still blowing it off as a stupid urban legend, it starts to make Sam look kind of dense.

The other problem I had was that Sam was apparently doing stuff off camera that gets mentioned later as a very big deal, and Sam is like “Oh yeah, I did that before.” It kind of annoyed me because I kept thinking I’d skimmed a section and needed to go back and read something I’d missed.

And finally, there were quite a few more mistakes in this story than the last one. Nothing to really pull me out of the flow, but this just didn’t feel as cleanly edited as the first book. It’s not going to be a deal killer and convince me not to get book three, Elven Blood, because at this point, I’m curious to see what Sam will do with all these offers she’s being made by the vampires, elves, and demons, not to mention how she’s planning to handle her new job even though she claims she doesn’t want it.

Overall, I don’t think any of the problems I had were that big of a deal, and I give Satan’s Sword 4 stars and recommend it to fans of dark fantasy. Sam’s an interesting character, and I look forward to seeing what trouble she’ll get herself mixed up in in the next episode.