Demons are real. The supernatural is real. Magic is real. One man can become the master of all.
Wes is working the hotel lobby the night his life changes forever. Called to the top floor to deal with rowdy patrons, he finds himself in a high stakes poker game alongside a beautiful woman who is, apparently, a demoness. To make the night crazier, the game ends with a startling Wes is a Warlock.
Wes can bind demons to his will and command the infernal elements.
With his newfound powers, Wes will have no shortage of new hellish friends, but his enemies are almost equal in number. Among them are the famed Knights Templar, who have a keen interest in Earth's latest Warlock.
Armed with the staff of Solomon the First Warlock and surrounded by demonesses under his power, Wes aims not to be yet another dead member of the quickly diminishing Warlock population.
I liked the first book of The Warlock enough to keep going. It's basically a "Lucifer Reborn," plot but the demons aren't evil and the MC starts off a decent guy.
It set up a situation, characters, and world I wanted to know more about. But book two got lazy and didn't deliver - like a bad sequel. Female erotica is filled with plain, overlooked women who have rich and powerful men needing them for no reason. That's a female fantasy, not a man's. Men want to be wanted for reasons.
The MC becomes more arrogant, but the arrogance feels completely unearned. He is not especially smart. He is not especially funny. He is not especially charming. He is not especially skilled. He does not plan. He does not learn. He does not grow. He just charges headfirst into things he does not understand, survives because the plot needs him to survive, and then treats that luck like proof he is special.
The bigger problem is that he is completely uncurious. He is dealing with people, creatures, demons, and conflicts that go back thousands of years, and he barely asks questions. He does not try to understand the world he has been dropped into. He does not investigate motives. He does not think through consequences. He just makes knee-jerk assumptions, and the narrative treats those assumptions like they are probably right because he is the main character.
The first book worked well enough as a set up. Book two became a mess because the MC’s confidence kept growing while his actual character did not.
Did a stupid ass fourth wall break by saying he's seen so much weird stuff if he wrote a book about it no one would believe him. Crap like that wrecks immersion all for a cheap joke
It feels like they often went out of their way to pick the most uncommon word whenever they used a thesaurus. But there's also points where word's don't seem to fit like "Wes’s jaw dropped at the sight of it—the genie looked like the platonic ideal of a red-hot MILF." Platonic really isn't the right word since it means Non-sexual love. There are also plenty of sentences that are structured wrong almost like English is a second language.