We Sold Our Souls is a fascinating and unique novel. I truly never have read anything quite like it. My interest in the novel is heightened by me being a life long heavy metal fan. I don’t know if I would have liked this nearly as much if the focus of the novel was, say country instead of metal. That said, I think this novel worked in many different ways, and would still be a great read even if you had no interest in heavy metal.
For starters, the writing is really strong. The voice is loud and clear. The grammar, flow, and pace are all tight. I liked the way the author broke into the action with radio and television interviews or news reports to fill in the details. The characterization was also strong. Chris comes out loud and clear, as do some of the side characters. Even the villains in the story to a certain level are sympathetic and are not just evil for the sake of being evil. It’s easy to sympathize with a musician who will sell their soul not just for fame and fortune but to be legendary, for their music to live on long after they are gone. There is a lot that I liked about this novel, and my complaints are only minor. This is a horror novel well worth reading.
Demons for me is a tale of two books. Apparently, it started off as a novella, and later became a novel, when a second, longer part was added to it. The first part of demons was great. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It had an interesting concept, a kind of light, understated tone to it, a well-developed plot, and a decent conclusion. The characters were just so-so, but there was a lot to like about it. I wished that was all I had read because the following, longer part did not come close to delivering.
All of the charm and wit the novella had, the extended novel was lacking. The story was incoherent and nonsensical. The author wanted the reader to believe that through some sort of control of the media, that people did not believe that the demon invasion happened, despite the fact that thousands upon thousands of people died, it had dominated every facet of the world when it happened, every single human being alive witnessed it, the president of the United States was killed by a demon, and the vice president was running the country through a bunker. Am I missing something? In the novella, demons were bad and they overran the planet. Now, the author decided to use the ridiculously overused trope that it was the evil industrial corporations that were responsible for summoning these demons. Writers have a habit of using the evil, industrial corporation as the villain like a crutch. It’s old and tired. And for some reason it would be desirable for these folks to have demons destroy the planet and have it become some sort of dystopian world. Yeah, that’s exactly what a corporate industrialist would want. None of it made sense, including the part where they take away a child so they could replace him with a member of the circle. It was a big mess. I would recommend reading the first part and stopping there.
Overall, I enjoyed Words of Radiance, perhaps not as much as the first novel in the series, but I still thought it was quite good. Not that I thought every aspect of this novel was good. For one thing, it’s too long. Even though some parts of it are page-turning and intriguing, there were too many long flashbacks, too many inconsequential scenes, and the interludes generally seem like a waste of time. So, this novel is quite good but not without its flaws. The lifeblood of any series is the characters, since the reader is going to have to spend so much time with the characters, especially in a novel as long as this one. This novel and series have well-developed characters from the main ones: Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar to many of the lesser and side characters. The author is strong at characterization as well as building suspense. I found myself wanting to find out more about the big reveals, which are set up well. There are times when the novel is an exciting page-turner
