Michael Thorpe had been considering asking his best friend Riley Sullivan to be his girlfriend, at least until he met another girl who instantly stole his heart. The problem is, the object of his sudden infatuation isn’t exactly normal. She has horns, wings, and a tail…and to complicate matters, she might have a fatal interest in Michael derived from her need for human blood. Will his newfound love interest lead to his untimely death? Or can he find a way to make it work out between him and his demon girlfriend?
Kurtis Eckstein is a huge fan of books, anime, and coffee! He has always wanted to create his own stories, but never felt like he had the time to invest in a full book. Finally, he decided to settle with writing short-stories, only to discover he loved it so much that it became his primary hobby.
Now, in addition to writing full novels, he also writes short-stories regularly on his Reddit page r/AuthorKurt in order to continue improving his writing skills and develop new story ideas. Check out his page on Reddit to view a ton of great content for free!
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Did i love this book? Abserloutly. Will you? that depends!
Go in with your eyes wide open. This is Essentially twilght but written for boys. This is the rarest of rare things, paranormal romance for dudes. You should from this statement alone know whether this book is for you or not. Yes, theirs some exploration of the troubles a paranormal couple can have, yes theirs a little bit of action. But at its core, this is a wish fullfillment book. The core focus throughout is the relationship between the two main characters, and the fallout that insues.
With that out the way then! if your still with me reading this! then that means this book is for you! and oh boy, are you in for a treat if you like this kind of thing! Its done really well. The book is FTB (fade to black), which i actually dont mind. The relationship between michael and miranda is so nice, it was a pleasure to read. Shes super strong, so she has to try hard not to hurt him when their together, its pretty sweet. I think some people will dislike the dynamic of the relationship though. Unlike most male protagonists, Michael is not super strong, he doesent dominate Miranda. Hes not really the one in controll, and i know this will bug allot of readers of this genre. I however did not mind it, i quite enjoyed the change actually. Infact i wouldnt mind reading more books with this dynamic. The closest series i can think to compare it too, would be the romance in demon accords. Specifically the first book GodTouched (a book i also sincerely loved by the way). Although this has considerably less action in it. I would say The DemonAccords is like a propper book series, which happens to have some paranormal romance in it. Where as this is the reverse. This book is every bit as inplausable and wishfullfillmenty as the many harem books out there. Just without the harem. But if you dont mind that (i dont) then give this a try! you have a good chance of enjoying it.
Additonal notes! i listened to this as an audiobook, and i have to say i would recommend this as the preffered way of going about it. Some genius at the production department had the fantastic idea of haveing both a male and female voice actor. This has numerouse benefits... for one, the sexy vampire demon doesent sound like a highpitched smoker like some other audibooks in this genre, when its all read by a man (think fimblewinter). It also made it more immersive and almost certainly the 'premium' experience.
Tldr: A great book if you are a man who likes paranormal romance. If thats the case then buckle up and dive right in, because this book is for you! Essentially if you want a book about haveing a vampire/demon girlfriend..... that is essentially the entirety of this book. If you dont want that.... easy skip.
DNF That was worse than Twilight I really liked the Immortal Supers by this author. I liked Omega squad & Rise of the Deathstalkers. But like Soulbound to a Dragon This guy can also write some real stinkers. This is one of the second kind. This book is very much a gender swap of Twilight where the Vampire is a Succubus (demon) And where the author thought it needed a lot more teenage angst. It was the teen angst that killed me. Yes this has WAY more teen angst than Twilight. Look upon that ye mighty and despair. Another thing that threw me off is that I started this right after reading rise of the Deathstalkers and the demon girl in this book was described exactly like Mason from 'stalkers so I was wondering if it was a prequel before all the similarities to Stephanie Meyer could no longer be denied. The writing here is all tell and no show. It's mostly internal monologue and it was getting tedious before the High school drama kicked off. Congratulations to the people who can enjoy this book, your life contains more joy than mine. But I can't stomach it. *Disclaimer addendum* Hey I just found that some guys out there are trashing this book because the male MC is not a "manly" alpha male dude. I had no problem with that at all. I actually thought it was interesting and refreshing to see a male character who doesn't dominate his romantic interest for a change. I DNF this book because the High-school drama was too thick, and in some respects too accurate to enjoy. I just wanted to clear that up.
This was one of those stories that was going left and then went right. It's one of those stories that has a main protagonist that you think has the world's biggest secret and at the end, it's everyone else that has bigger ones that kinda make his pale in comparison. This was a nice story of two people who fall in love and the problems that come from quite literally being of 2 different species. There really isn't much to tell beyond that it has plenty of action and excitement involved in the story and it ends on a pretty legit cliff hanger. I'll be reading book 2.
There are no demons in this book. The book does not deal in any explicitly magical or supernatural beings, and the non-human characters in the book are described as if their differences from humanity are merely biological. The author continually misrepresents how radiation works, to try and explain away blatantly magical feats. The non-human characters in question explicitly explain that they are not from any kind of supernatural after-life, nor are any of their abilities ‘magic’.
However, the Main Character continuously struggles to remember that the non-human characters of the book are not demons (despite being explicitly reminded, multiple times). And so, because the book is written from his point-of-view (limited third-person), it inherits his frequent use of the word ‘demon’ to describe the non-human characters around him.
Part 2: Teenage Melodrama
The appeal of this book appears to be in reveling in the relationship melodrama that the characters undergo, as their relationships are put under the stress of a new and sudden change in the main character’s life. The Story spends the majority of its word count describing one or more characters crying, raving, or despairing, about how betrayed/lonely/upset they feel upon discovering some roadbump in their personal relationships. From characters having emotional shouting matches, to ‘he-said-she-said’ gossip, to long internal-monologues about just how bad a character feels, the story exists for their drama.
The Internal-Monologuing gets particular special mention, as it’s an everpresent feature of whole series. Every single chapter has multiple paragraphs dedicated to describing the Main Character’s upset feelings or worried thoughts. There are some chapters that are almost entirely internal monologue, nearly all of it filled with relationship angst.
This feels like a good point to mention that, with a few rare exceptions, every single one of the ‘on-screen’ characters are teenagers. As such, all of the stupid lies, secret-keeping, and poorly justified reasoning could maybe be written off as ‘just teenagers being dumb and hormonal’. To my mind, though, it was just contrived nonsense to justify making the next scene more dramatic.
Part 3: Troubled Love.
The focus on melodrama extends to the main romantic couple of the book. Their love has the rocky start of an extreme version of ‘Fated-Mates’ / ‘Instant-Love-at-first-sight’, with the Main Character having a deep compulsion to stay with the Love Interest at all costs.
For most of the book, their romance is a hot-and-cold ‘will-they, wont-they’, with it being unclear if she reciprocates his feelings; and in the event that she does, if she’s willing to act on them. Her behavior ends up playing into the demonic archetype, being coy and tempting in some scenes, then switching to emotionless and callous in others.
There is some amount of 'Star crossed lovers' stuff going on, with outside forces getting in the way of their love, but I cannot comment any further without spoilers. Suffice it to say, it's a fairly important element, especially later in the story.
This is furthered along by the intense amount of secret-keeping and lies; the story gets a great deal of drama out of how little the Love Interest reveals about herself, and how her insistence on remaining a secret from everyone else in the Main Character’s life is causing him emotional distress. Cue more Internal Monologue-ing.
Part 4: Transition into Book 2
Book 1 ends oddly. I won’t spoil, but it straddles the line between cliffhanger and tied up resolution. Book 2 does not adequately address that ending, and in fact spends most of its word count ignoring the story of the first book entirely.
There are major bits of information that the ending of Book 1 calls into question with a big reveal. Book 2 treats this reveal as if it never happened, and continues to operate as if those major bits of information are still entirely unquestioned. Assuming that the series is concluded, this is never fixed: Book 2 ends with those same issues still unresolved, and treated as if everyone forgot about them.
Part 5: Superhero Punch-ups.
Book 2 changes course dramatically. The story shifts to be about giving the Main Character superpowers, having him spend most of the book trying to understand them, and occasionally using them to have fight-scenes that appear copied directly from some cheap-rate anime or superhero film.
I find it especially telling that the book rips Escanor’s “Who Decided That?” scene from the anime Seven Deadly Sins (with none of the thematic weight or setup from the original scene, just added in because the author thought it’d be cool).
There’s still a lot of relationship drama, and the Main Character’s whiny internal monologue ramps up significantly. There are whole chapters dedicated to just having the Main Character whine and despair over how bad he feels about the latest upset in his romantic life. But the focus largely remains on the superpowers involved. The story even mostly gives up on trying to pretend like everything in the story could be explained by sci-fi, reducing the pseudo-scientific explanations to the occasional aside.
Part 5: Conclusion
Demon Seer (1 and 2) is a very dramatic supernatural YA romance story. I had a fairly bad time with it, but it’s overall quality is probably fairly servicable. The Narration works, the Story isn’t unreadable. I’m just not personally interested in contrived relationship drama. That’ll probably be the deciding factor for someone’s enjoyment: how much they enjoy teenage gossip drama.
Main character, Michael Thorpe, is written like a total #DramaQueen #Wimp from the very first page. Very hard to enjoy a book where the main character heavily bruises by other people looking at him. Or someone who loses his self-respect/dignity/demeanor at the first demon-who-comes-a-knockin' (Miriam). It has above average descriptions of main characters, little to no world-building, describing the (economic, social, political, religious, geographical, etc.) systems in place in this Urban-Fantasy-dystopian-alternate-reality-world. Book has no maps, no character summaries, the chapters are short (average 10 pages a chapter in a really short 200 page book. The chapters are one word names, which is as shallow and un-invested/uncommitted as this story). Story lacks a main theme in the first book of the series (at least). Turning into a demon/monster/former-human is not any kind of theme...nor is the journal-type-accounts of main character and miriam's (demon) love affair enough for a real book or a book series. Even Twilight (saga about vampires and lycans) had substance in the story (within all the soap-opera). This has a soap-opera-ish main character, written that way by a "guy" writer which is not common. If Miriam was the human girl and Michael, the demon guy (and they reversed their roles) the story would still be as bad, but at least would make a little bit more sense. I do not recommend this book or the series.
Michael was a zombie. We have insta love, which can be ok, but was just bad in this case.
He is a teenager who instantly falls in love with a demon while she is eating the corpse of a teacher.
We find out later that the teacher was ill, but Michael says he would still love her even if she Murdered his entire family in front of him only minutes after he met her.
I just have a few problems with that. Couldn’t continue to read.
I really enjoyed this book, which frankly quite surprised me. I’m not normally a big demon fan, but I gave this book a chance because Kurtis Eckstein is one of my favorite authors. Well, I’m very glad that I did, because I really enjoyed this book. Great characters, great plot & great action. Really looking forward to immediately starting book 2. Read this book, you’ll be very glad you did. Keep up the great work, Kurtis!!
I liked this one. Interesting story with good characters that developed nicely as the story progressed. Good build up to a cliff hanger ending. I wish there had been more details about the other demons. It really felt kind of awkward with so little detail with all the vengeful drama near the end. Still I’m looking forward to the next book.
In the words of the MC, he's pathetic. I really enjoy Ecksteins immortals series and Omega series, but I really can't get past two hours of this audiobook. The MMC was like some baby bird who imprinted on the FMC, it was really cringey and not very interesting to read. It reminds me too much of shitty anime, sorry not sorry.
What starts as a decent, albeit rushed, plotline about dark romance devolves over the course of the story into overreaching madness. So many additional plotlines all clamoring for attention, culminating in an incredibly dissatisfying cliffhanger. The quality of the writing also takes a noticeable dive the further along it goes.
Meh it's light reading, definitely aiming for teen twilight. It's not bad just really not my cup of tea. Oh and in the version I read (free promotion) it's not really a whole book, it feels like it cuts away in the middle of a chapter.
It takes a long time to really get interesting. Once I was able to slog through the build up to the good part I couldn't put it down. I will get book two only because I hate not knowing what happens next
Good story, altough it was quite hard to bear the first half of the book, after the revelations come undone it takes a lift. The author does know how to make ending that makes the reader crave for morre books of him.
A very good story. I thought remain character was a perfect fit for the new world he finds himself in. An enjoyable start, can't wait for the rest of his story.