Review: Demon Angel by Meljean Brook

Title: Demon Angel
Author: Meljean Brook
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Grade: A-
Reason for reading: Originally, I just thought the premise looked like fun. Then I decided to make January Meljean Brook Appreciation Month around these parts, which required the supreme sacrifice of reading Ms. Brook’s backlist, starting with this one.

Synopsis: For two thousand years, Lilith wrought vengeance upon the evil and the damned, gathering
souls for her father’s armies Below and proving her fealty to her Underworld liege.
Bound by a bargain with the devil and forbidden to feel pleasure, she draws upon
her dark powers and serpentine grace to lead men into temptation. That is, until
she faces her greatest temptation—Heaven’s own Sir Hugh Castleford…
Once a knight and now a Guardian, Hugh spent centuries battling demons—and the cursed,
blood-drinking nosferatu. His purpose has always been to thwart the demon Lilith,
even as he battles his treacherous hunger for her. But when a deadly alliance unleashes
a threat to both humans and Guardians in modern-day San Francisco, angel and demon
must fight together against unholy evil—and against a desire that has been too long
denied…
Who will be the first to succumb?

My Thoughts: I really, really loved this book. Ms. Brook writes an intelligent and meaty romance with two extremely compelling characters. No staples from central casting, our Hugh and Lilith are fully realized characters with some large obstacles to surmount.

First of all, as I’ve said on countless occasions and will continue to say, I need for a romance to have a compelling heroine. If the hero’s hot, that’s great, but since I’m not crazy about reading about walking wish fulfillment fantasies, I need the heroine to have substance. Lilith completely does. In fact, she’s a wonderfully refreshing change from the sweet little flowers of gentle innocence and purity that seem all too prevalent in romancelandia. Lilith is wicked, unashamedly so. She does grow and realize she is capable of kindness, but in the end she is essentially still Lilith. She is not subsumed by Hugh’s will, and in actuality she remained the more compelling of the two throughout.

I did like Hugh quite a lot. I liked his goodness, and I liked that he faces quite a bit of self-doubt. Some authors would have made him a total prig, but Brook makes him extremely likeable. And Lilith and Hugh together? OMG, hot hot hot!
There was a fair bit of sequel-baiting, but I found both Colin and Savi to be well-drawn secondary characters as well, and it was a refreshing change not to have a sudden influx of buff guardian men each of whom had more angsty pasts than the last. It was also a lot of fun to watch the banter between Hugh, Lilith and Colin, and to feel that there really was a connection between all of these people. And while I’m squeeing about secondary characters, Sir Pup, Lilith’s hellhound, might possibly be the best sentient animal companion type character I’ve read in a long time, and that takes a lot, since I hate that trope in books not written for teenage girls.

The plot takes a while to get going as the first part of the book is essentially a ginormous prologue to get things set up for the second half of the book. But by the time the action officially starts in the second half of the book, it does not relent. I kept reading, compelled to see what would happen to Hugh and Lilith and how their situation would be resolved. It is also one of the few books I’ve read recently that might stand up to a second reading. I’m pretty sure I missed some subtleties of the plot and characterization that I would catch in further readings.

The dialogue is also crisp and feels authentic to the characters, and again, I loved that Lilith occasionally swore like a sailor, because real women do occasionally feel the need to say fuck.

But, sadly, I did have quibbles. Mostly, they were quibbles that are reader specific. I was able to put the book down and walk away from it several times, and I thought the plot took too long to really engage me. And there was a trope used here that I really have come to dislike in urban fantasy and paranormal romance, that being that all the humans seem to react to the knowledge that there are guardians, demons, vampires and nosferatu with way more aplomb than I thought was appropriate. Nobody is startled, there’s not really much of a “WTF!” reaction, and people just accept everything with a shrug and move on. Of course, that sort of thing is not exclusive to Ms. Brook, but it still bothers me.

Overall, though this book didn’t have me in raptures, the fact that I loved the characters and the universe Ms. Brook has created means I would recommend it highly.