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Demon Hunter #1
Birthright
Jimmy Kaplan has a hard enough time staying on top of his graduate studies in Chemical Engineering and dealing with the death of his quirky, cantankerous grandmother, who raised him from childhood.
When a beautiful, mysterious woman appears in his apartment building and friends start turning up dead, Jimmy finds himself drawn into his grandmother’s books on magic and demonology, even as he scorns them as superstition.
But all is not as it seems. For his grandmother was tied up with an ancient legacy that Jimmy must face whether he believes in it or not. And he finds that magic and chemical engineering are not so incompatible . . . especially when it comes to beautiful, voluptuous demons.
Demon Hunter: Birthright is the first novel in the Demon Hunter series and contains explicit adult scenes and themes of harem, black magic and demonology.
When a beautiful, mysterious woman appears in his apartment building and friends start turning up dead, Jimmy finds himself drawn into his grandmother’s books on magic and demonology, even as he scorns them as superstition.
But all is not as it seems. For his grandmother was tied up with an ancient legacy that Jimmy must face whether he believes in it or not. And he finds that magic and chemical engineering are not so incompatible . . . especially when it comes to beautiful, voluptuous demons.
Demon Hunter: Birthright is the first novel in the Demon Hunter series and contains explicit adult scenes and themes of harem, black magic and demonology.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2021
234 people are currently reading
356 people want to read
About the author
Michael Dalton
81 books321 followersMichael Dalton is a professional journalist and editor.
Michael wrote his first piece of fiction in third grade, for which he was immediately accused of plagiarism by his teacher. Since then, he has been writing more or less steadily, interrupted only by occasional demands of work and family.
Michael lives with his family and multiple pets in Southern California.
Michael wrote his first piece of fiction in third grade, for which he was immediately accused of plagiarism by his teacher. Since then, he has been writing more or less steadily, interrupted only by occasional demands of work and family.
Michael lives with his family and multiple pets in Southern California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
June 11, 2021
Rating 4.0 stars
I enjoyed this book. It was very easy to read. The title is a little misleading. The story follows Jimmy, a chemistry grad student that finds out there is more in the world than he knew when his grandmother dies. She leaves him a group of books written in Latin that deal with magic and demons. It is a good thing that she made him take 4 years of Latin in high school and 3 years in college. It is also a good thing that he has been studying chemistry for soo long since that information is really important in summoning and binding demons. She prepared him for this moment his whole life and he never knew. The first thing he does is bind a succubus that has been killing students on campus. Once that happens he knows everything is real. Up to that point I thought his purpose to hunt down and destroy demons like the title suggested, but that wasn't the case. There was a good ratio of sex to story in this harem book. I don't really like when an author writes about how sexy people are throughout the book but there only ends up being one sex scene that isn't that well written. I also don't like the alternative to that were the characters are having sex that doesn't fit into the context of the story (being chased and almost killed but stopping for a quickie). The balance was pretty good in this one. There was time for moving the story along and then there was time for fun. I also like the combination of the new with the old. Jimmy took the formula from the old books and updated them with what he new about chemistry. Was it accurate? No clue, but it sounded good. Overall I enjoyed the book.
I enjoyed this book. It was very easy to read. The title is a little misleading. The story follows Jimmy, a chemistry grad student that finds out there is more in the world than he knew when his grandmother dies. She leaves him a group of books written in Latin that deal with magic and demons. It is a good thing that she made him take 4 years of Latin in high school and 3 years in college. It is also a good thing that he has been studying chemistry for soo long since that information is really important in summoning and binding demons. She prepared him for this moment his whole life and he never knew. The first thing he does is bind a succubus that has been killing students on campus. Once that happens he knows everything is real. Up to that point I thought his purpose to hunt down and destroy demons like the title suggested, but that wasn't the case. There was a good ratio of sex to story in this harem book. I don't really like when an author writes about how sexy people are throughout the book but there only ends up being one sex scene that isn't that well written. I also don't like the alternative to that were the characters are having sex that doesn't fit into the context of the story (being chased and almost killed but stopping for a quickie). The balance was pretty good in this one. There was time for moving the story along and then there was time for fun. I also like the combination of the new with the old. Jimmy took the formula from the old books and updated them with what he new about chemistry. Was it accurate? No clue, but it sounded good. Overall I enjoyed the book.
May 20, 2021
This novel is called Demon Hunter in the same way that a corrupt cop that chases drug lords because they are a competition to his side-business might be called a "narc". Technically, not incorrect.
Didn't really empathize with any of the characters. As I said, the MC has very malleable morals, none of the girls are very interesting (as is often the case where one of the main girls is a succubus), and the plot did not interest me in the least.
Didn't really empathize with any of the characters. As I said, the MC has very malleable morals, none of the girls are very interesting (as is often the case where one of the main girls is a succubus), and the plot did not interest me in the least.
May 11, 2021
Liked this a lot; adjusted for initially relatively low expectations, this was a great book. I like a smart, capable, sensible MC and this book delivers one without having to resort to OP foolishness.
The MC actually leverages his advanced knowledge of chemistry to improve ancient summoning techniques, and it's very well laid out without getting pedantic. The harem elements are not overdone and actually make sense in context. Overall, the story makes sense (allowing for the fantasy elements) and is well executed. I look forward to the next one.
The MC actually leverages his advanced knowledge of chemistry to improve ancient summoning techniques, and it's very well laid out without getting pedantic. The harem elements are not overdone and actually make sense in context. Overall, the story makes sense (allowing for the fantasy elements) and is well executed. I look forward to the next one.
October 6, 2023
I was not expecting this book to be so good.
What do we have here? It's an urban fantasy, the protagonist is pretty sure he's normal, but is an orphan, and as events reveal, he has a secret mysterious past, granting him fantastical powers. In the process of discovering this, he ends up with a harem of girls, but also some powerful enemeies.
So far, so typical. But what sets this apart is it's actually...quite good? I would note in particular:
● Protagonist is a grad student working on a chemical engineering PhD. And when push comes to shove, he...likes to solve his problems by thinking about them, doing some research, and sometimes doing a little lab work. It's almost like the protagonists back story means something, A+
● Similarly, over and over in this series the protagonist finds a problem, does a bunch of research, thinks about it, then uses his fantastical powers not to punch someone so hard their spleen liquifies, but to brew up some alchemical concoction that lets him sneak past or neutralize a ward or otherwise solve the problem nonviolently.
● Generally just a happy sort of book. Fun interpersonal relationships between all the main characters.
I could have wished for characters to be SLIGHTLY more fully rendered (they're not bad, but still).
But really, there's just a lot to like here.
What do we have here? It's an urban fantasy, the protagonist is pretty sure he's normal, but is an orphan, and as events reveal, he has a secret mysterious past, granting him fantastical powers. In the process of discovering this, he ends up with a harem of girls, but also some powerful enemeies.
So far, so typical. But what sets this apart is it's actually...quite good? I would note in particular:
● Protagonist is a grad student working on a chemical engineering PhD. And when push comes to shove, he...likes to solve his problems by thinking about them, doing some research, and sometimes doing a little lab work. It's almost like the protagonists back story means something, A+
● Similarly, over and over in this series the protagonist finds a problem, does a bunch of research, thinks about it, then uses his fantastical powers not to punch someone so hard their spleen liquifies, but to brew up some alchemical concoction that lets him sneak past or neutralize a ward or otherwise solve the problem nonviolently.
● Generally just a happy sort of book. Fun interpersonal relationships between all the main characters.
I could have wished for characters to be SLIGHTLY more fully rendered (they're not bad, but still).
But really, there's just a lot to like here.
August 3, 2021
Alright, I am a little surprised I liked this as much as I did.
Given the length, I was not expecting much. You can only got in so much in less than two hundred pages. But the content is there. The magical updates, the demonic apps, that is priceless.
Given the length, I was not expecting much. You can only got in so much in less than two hundred pages. But the content is there. The magical updates, the demonic apps, that is priceless.
November 28, 2024
Audiobook.
Partial series review: books 1 [Birthright], 2 [The Vermillion Cabal], and up to chapter 7 of book 3 [The Breamstone Collective].
Overview
The "Demon Hunter" series is a Harem Male-Fantasy series, with the added theming and elements of Urban-Fantasy, Witchcraft/Demon-magic, and bits of intrigue/mystery.
The Story starts off with the protagonist: Jimmy Kaplan, a Grad-student. The inciting event that flips Jimmy's life from mundane to supernatural fantasy is his Grandmother's death, leaving him with a Magical inheritance of superpowers and mysterious ties to mysteries organizations. Along the way, he acquires multiple cute women, who all agree to be in a polyamorous "coven" (harem) with him.
The Story is at it's best when it is following Jimmy's investigation of his Mysterious Past, and exploration of his powers. Jimmy's search for the truth ends up being engaging and entertaining, even if the story isn't actually all that special. The magic system has some genuinely novel moments, but they are rare, and get rarer as the series continues.
The Story is at it's worst with its intimacy, romantic, and sex-scenes, and everything related thereto. They have a genuinely Childish and Juvenille feel to them; a 13 year-old's idea of how a super-sex master man has super-sex. They lack in multiple regards, and ultimately feel like interruptions to the story. Meanwhile, the justifications for these sex scenes (the romance, etc) ends up being very stilted, and even dips into very questionable morality.
The Good: Mysteries and Chemistries
The Mystery of Jimmy's past is genuinely engaging for the first two books. For a decent stretch of the story, for each answer Jimmy & co dig up, they come away with several more questions. By the time most of the mystery has been laid bare, it turns out to be not terribly original or special, but the journey to uncover it was a decent time filler, and executed the reveals with adequate drama.
Meanwhile, the magic system does stray into genuinely somewhat novel ideas at times, but does not fully commit, and thus it ends up being more of an occasional perk than anything else.
This semi-novel approach is to treat many old Pagan/Witchcraft/Wicca/DemonMagic rituals with the same historical view that many Medieval Medicines have been viewed: the people of old were 'onto something', but they didn't have enough true knowledge of chemistry/mathematics to know why the things they were doing worked.
So, multiple times in the story, Jimmy will prepare a Pagan/Wicca/Witchcraft themed ritual, only to break down the process to its component parts, and take educated guesses as to which parts of the ritual were actually necessary. I would call it "taking a Scientific Method to the Magic", if only he didn't just so happen to guess correctly the first time every time. This was a bit of an interesting treat each time it happened, even if it ended up clashing with how all other magic was portrayed in the story.
The First issue: Sex and Romance Solely for the Sake of Pride
It's no surprise that a Male-Fantasy harem book would feature male-catered sex scenes. But it did turn out to be a bit of a surprise of just how far the book goes to play up the fantasy, at the cost of genuine titillation.
It starts with how most sex scenes start off: as route matters of course. The story seems to just throw in a sex scene each and every time he achieves certain things. Does a Dream-meditative Trance? Has some sex while doing it. Has a discussion about his past with one of his women? Has some sex afterwards. Gets a new magical doodad? Uses the act of showing it off as foreplay for sex. Rarely, if ever, does it have any kind of romantic feel or build up of lust. It's simple a matter of course: "does thing? Have Sex.".
It worsens with the Quality of the sex scenes themselves, though. They are written very...brutishly? Like, instead of writing of the passion they feel or the tenderness of their embrace, it instead focuses on the male-focused buzz-words. Entire paragraphs end up solely dedicated to variations on the phrase "and then I pounded/railed/drove-into/pumped/jackhammered/slammed into her". It treats it as if the more times the phrase "I thrust into her" is said, the "better" the scene becomes. Occasionally, it remembers to add in "and then I/she moaned" or descriptions of the woman's body, but it's mostly just a rather juvenile thrusting fantasy.
This extends to a bit of an extreme: all female pleasure, as it ends up being portrayed in this book, is treated as a given afterthought. The story only occasionally remembers to add in a line like "and then I reached around and played with her clit", but most of the time it, again, is focusing on how hard he is slapping his willy into her (as if to gain pleasure through sheer brute force). The extreme, however, comes in the form of his magic: Jimmy brings magic into the bed-play, and upon having this magical force to do any number of things with himself and his women, all he does is A: Increase boob size/'perkiness' and B: Magically compel an orgasm, lock that orgasm in place as a continuous high, and then forget about doing anything else for the woman from thereon out.
I kind of want to restate that for emphasis: this book's idea of super magical super-sex is to flip a magical switch that makes the woman orgasm, and keeps her there. The Magical Fantasy sex-play is to not have to worry about whether or not the woman is getting anything out of it, because you flipped the magic "she likes it" switch, and now you can sit back and enjoy her pleasuring you. This is, to my mind, mildly horrific, if for no other reason than the sheer misunderstanding of how neurotransmitters are handled inside the brain.
But these, along with many other, more subtle-and-hard-to-describe writing choices, end up making the story as a whole feel like it's a thirteen year old child trying to brag to his ten year old friends about how much awesome cool super sex he's having. It's genuinely a bit Juvenile.
The Second Issue: Immoral Slavery and Soul-Theft, and Can't Even Own Up to It
The story has at least 2 women, as part of Jimmy's harem, whose souls are his literal property. He enslaves them: and not just any-old slavery either. It is explicitly stated that the magical bindings responsible for the slavery compel the women to A: notice what does and does not please him, and B: change their appearance, personality, emotions, and/or thought-processes, in order to please him more.
The story does not go so far as to extrapolate from here, but it's more than a little clear to me: there can be no question as to the non-consent of the situation: it is magically compelled "consent", regardless of whatever they might say, because they are being forced to say whatever he wants to hear, and he wants them to like/want him.
This, on it's own, while morally rather gross, is not as big of a deal-breaker as it could be: the women in this 'arrangement' with Jimmy are quite literally souls from hell, who have explicitly done some amount of bad things. If you really wanted, you could construe this as a fucked up form of penance/'suffering for their sins'.
However, the book doesn't want to go that route. The book wants to treat these slave-master relations as if they are lovingly consensual heartfelt stories of souls who were always meant to be together finding a way into each other's arms. So over and over again, these women reaffirm their feelings for Jimmy, and claim them to be genuine, and Jimmy believes them, and the story seems to expect you to believe them too. The story occasionally tries to halfheartedly establish some amount of "they can speak their true, un-compelled thoughts here" moments, but they all feel disingenuous.
The worst of it, though, is the particular case of his his Demon-Waifu, Katarina. The story makes a whole big deal about it, a 'deal' that spans multiple books, about how she would feel Romantic Love for him, and she wants to feel Romantic Love for him, but she's been transformed into a Demon, and demons are simply incapable of feeling that emotion. The story does some very heavy handed foreshadowing that implies that, in a later book, Jimmy will 'remedy' this in Katarina, 'allowing' her to love him 'just as she wants to'. This is NOT, however, accompanied by any amount of foreshadowing implying that he might free her from his enslavement of her. That matter is instead reinforced: it is said multiple times that their bond is entirely unbreakable, and it is implied that their bond is the result of Fate.
This isn't even the only case of 'Jimmy does immoral and unethical things, but the story halfheartedly hand-waves the morality issue aside, plays it off as just more male-fantasy, and continues on as usual.'.
Jimmy, quite literally, work for Hell. Over the course of the books, the forces of Hell don't ask him to do anything blatantly and undeniably immoral: nothing so straightforward as "murder this human for us". But Jimmy actively works to help to catch traitors to the Infernal Cause, helps to save them money on their business costs, and works to disrupt one of their human-based rival groups. His actions are presumably making the world a worse place to live, and the story doesn't have the guts to own up to any of it. The story doesn't acknowledge the harm he might be doing, and continues to paint him as a kind-hearted hero. Kind of gross to read, if you think on it too long.
The Strikeout: Ret-cons and Degrading Quality
All of the previous points, the good and bad, ultimately still lead to me enjoying the first two books. But mid-way through the second book, and very clearly upon the start of the third, the story begins to degrade.
The most significant points of Jimmy's mysterious past have been revealed by this point: there are more mysterious points to uncover, but they are finer details. The Story has mostly given up trying to do it's "scientific take on magic" gimmick, and committed to having Jimmy cast spells in more "traditional" ways. This leaves most of the Good points of the story rather weak, going forward.
The Story, by the start of book three, has begun to seriously double down on the foreshadowing around Jimmy giving Katarina the power to feel Love. It also begins treating his harem as even more of a "collect-a-thon" than before, with him receiving something close to a magical prophecy that tells him he needs more girls for the coming trials. Jimmy's use of Magic in the bedroom, by this point, has becoming the main way that sex happens, accompanied by all the same strangeness as before.
As the story went on, I found that I really lost any and all interest in seeing it through to the end.
Books one and two worked well enough as a story arch in of themselves. I don't feel the need to finish the series; what I've read of it so far just makes what I have read worse by association. I DNF'd here.
Conclusion: Witchcraft-Themed Male Ego-Stroking
The Demon Hunter/Birthright series isn't the worst of the mass-produced male-fantasy-harem genre, but it also isn't particularly good. If you have access to it for cheap/free, and already read the genre, then the first to books might give you some entertainment value, so for that, they do their job well enough. But there are definitely better books out there.
For those who aren't already particular fans of the genre, I'd give this one a hard pass.
Partial series review: books 1 [Birthright], 2 [The Vermillion Cabal], and up to chapter 7 of book 3 [The Breamstone Collective].
Overview
The "Demon Hunter" series is a Harem Male-Fantasy series, with the added theming and elements of Urban-Fantasy, Witchcraft/Demon-magic, and bits of intrigue/mystery.
The Story starts off with the protagonist: Jimmy Kaplan, a Grad-student. The inciting event that flips Jimmy's life from mundane to supernatural fantasy is his Grandmother's death, leaving him with a Magical inheritance of superpowers and mysterious ties to mysteries organizations. Along the way, he acquires multiple cute women, who all agree to be in a polyamorous "coven" (harem) with him.
The Story is at it's best when it is following Jimmy's investigation of his Mysterious Past, and exploration of his powers. Jimmy's search for the truth ends up being engaging and entertaining, even if the story isn't actually all that special. The magic system has some genuinely novel moments, but they are rare, and get rarer as the series continues.
The Story is at it's worst with its intimacy, romantic, and sex-scenes, and everything related thereto. They have a genuinely Childish and Juvenille feel to them; a 13 year-old's idea of how a super-sex master man has super-sex. They lack in multiple regards, and ultimately feel like interruptions to the story. Meanwhile, the justifications for these sex scenes (the romance, etc) ends up being very stilted, and even dips into very questionable morality.
The Good: Mysteries and Chemistries
The Mystery of Jimmy's past is genuinely engaging for the first two books. For a decent stretch of the story, for each answer Jimmy & co dig up, they come away with several more questions. By the time most of the mystery has been laid bare, it turns out to be not terribly original or special, but the journey to uncover it was a decent time filler, and executed the reveals with adequate drama.
Meanwhile, the magic system does stray into genuinely somewhat novel ideas at times, but does not fully commit, and thus it ends up being more of an occasional perk than anything else.
This semi-novel approach is to treat many old Pagan/Witchcraft/Wicca/DemonMagic rituals with the same historical view that many Medieval Medicines have been viewed: the people of old were 'onto something', but they didn't have enough true knowledge of chemistry/mathematics to know why the things they were doing worked.
So, multiple times in the story, Jimmy will prepare a Pagan/Wicca/Witchcraft themed ritual, only to break down the process to its component parts, and take educated guesses as to which parts of the ritual were actually necessary. I would call it "taking a Scientific Method to the Magic", if only he didn't just so happen to guess correctly the first time every time. This was a bit of an interesting treat each time it happened, even if it ended up clashing with how all other magic was portrayed in the story.
The First issue: Sex and Romance Solely for the Sake of Pride
It's no surprise that a Male-Fantasy harem book would feature male-catered sex scenes. But it did turn out to be a bit of a surprise of just how far the book goes to play up the fantasy, at the cost of genuine titillation.
It starts with how most sex scenes start off: as route matters of course. The story seems to just throw in a sex scene each and every time he achieves certain things. Does a Dream-meditative Trance? Has some sex while doing it. Has a discussion about his past with one of his women? Has some sex afterwards. Gets a new magical doodad? Uses the act of showing it off as foreplay for sex. Rarely, if ever, does it have any kind of romantic feel or build up of lust. It's simple a matter of course: "does thing? Have Sex.".
It worsens with the Quality of the sex scenes themselves, though. They are written very...brutishly? Like, instead of writing of the passion they feel or the tenderness of their embrace, it instead focuses on the male-focused buzz-words. Entire paragraphs end up solely dedicated to variations on the phrase "and then I pounded/railed/drove-into/pumped/jackhammered/slammed into her". It treats it as if the more times the phrase "I thrust into her" is said, the "better" the scene becomes. Occasionally, it remembers to add in "and then I/she moaned" or descriptions of the woman's body, but it's mostly just a rather juvenile thrusting fantasy.
This extends to a bit of an extreme: all female pleasure, as it ends up being portrayed in this book, is treated as a given afterthought. The story only occasionally remembers to add in a line like "and then I reached around and played with her clit", but most of the time it, again, is focusing on how hard he is slapping his willy into her (as if to gain pleasure through sheer brute force). The extreme, however, comes in the form of his magic: Jimmy brings magic into the bed-play, and upon having this magical force to do any number of things with himself and his women, all he does is A: Increase boob size/'perkiness' and B: Magically compel an orgasm, lock that orgasm in place as a continuous high, and then forget about doing anything else for the woman from thereon out.
I kind of want to restate that for emphasis: this book's idea of super magical super-sex is to flip a magical switch that makes the woman orgasm, and keeps her there. The Magical Fantasy sex-play is to not have to worry about whether or not the woman is getting anything out of it, because you flipped the magic "she likes it" switch, and now you can sit back and enjoy her pleasuring you. This is, to my mind, mildly horrific, if for no other reason than the sheer misunderstanding of how neurotransmitters are handled inside the brain.
But these, along with many other, more subtle-and-hard-to-describe writing choices, end up making the story as a whole feel like it's a thirteen year old child trying to brag to his ten year old friends about how much awesome cool super sex he's having. It's genuinely a bit Juvenile.
The Second Issue: Immoral Slavery and Soul-Theft, and Can't Even Own Up to It
The story has at least 2 women, as part of Jimmy's harem, whose souls are his literal property. He enslaves them: and not just any-old slavery either. It is explicitly stated that the magical bindings responsible for the slavery compel the women to A: notice what does and does not please him, and B: change their appearance, personality, emotions, and/or thought-processes, in order to please him more.
The story does not go so far as to extrapolate from here, but it's more than a little clear to me: there can be no question as to the non-consent of the situation: it is magically compelled "consent", regardless of whatever they might say, because they are being forced to say whatever he wants to hear, and he wants them to like/want him.
This, on it's own, while morally rather gross, is not as big of a deal-breaker as it could be: the women in this 'arrangement' with Jimmy are quite literally souls from hell, who have explicitly done some amount of bad things. If you really wanted, you could construe this as a fucked up form of penance/'suffering for their sins'.
However, the book doesn't want to go that route. The book wants to treat these slave-master relations as if they are lovingly consensual heartfelt stories of souls who were always meant to be together finding a way into each other's arms. So over and over again, these women reaffirm their feelings for Jimmy, and claim them to be genuine, and Jimmy believes them, and the story seems to expect you to believe them too. The story occasionally tries to halfheartedly establish some amount of "they can speak their true, un-compelled thoughts here" moments, but they all feel disingenuous.
The worst of it, though, is the particular case of his his Demon-Waifu, Katarina. The story makes a whole big deal about it, a 'deal' that spans multiple books, about how she would feel Romantic Love for him, and she wants to feel Romantic Love for him, but she's been transformed into a Demon, and demons are simply incapable of feeling that emotion. The story does some very heavy handed foreshadowing that implies that, in a later book, Jimmy will 'remedy' this in Katarina, 'allowing' her to love him 'just as she wants to'. This is NOT, however, accompanied by any amount of foreshadowing implying that he might free her from his enslavement of her. That matter is instead reinforced: it is said multiple times that their bond is entirely unbreakable, and it is implied that their bond is the result of Fate.
This isn't even the only case of 'Jimmy does immoral and unethical things, but the story halfheartedly hand-waves the morality issue aside, plays it off as just more male-fantasy, and continues on as usual.'.
Jimmy, quite literally, work for Hell. Over the course of the books, the forces of Hell don't ask him to do anything blatantly and undeniably immoral: nothing so straightforward as "murder this human for us". But Jimmy actively works to help to catch traitors to the Infernal Cause, helps to save them money on their business costs, and works to disrupt one of their human-based rival groups. His actions are presumably making the world a worse place to live, and the story doesn't have the guts to own up to any of it. The story doesn't acknowledge the harm he might be doing, and continues to paint him as a kind-hearted hero. Kind of gross to read, if you think on it too long.
The Strikeout: Ret-cons and Degrading Quality
All of the previous points, the good and bad, ultimately still lead to me enjoying the first two books. But mid-way through the second book, and very clearly upon the start of the third, the story begins to degrade.
The most significant points of Jimmy's mysterious past have been revealed by this point: there are more mysterious points to uncover, but they are finer details. The Story has mostly given up trying to do it's "scientific take on magic" gimmick, and committed to having Jimmy cast spells in more "traditional" ways. This leaves most of the Good points of the story rather weak, going forward.
The Story, by the start of book three, has begun to seriously double down on the foreshadowing around Jimmy giving Katarina the power to feel Love. It also begins treating his harem as even more of a "collect-a-thon" than before, with him receiving something close to a magical prophecy that tells him he needs more girls for the coming trials. Jimmy's use of Magic in the bedroom, by this point, has becoming the main way that sex happens, accompanied by all the same strangeness as before.
As the story went on, I found that I really lost any and all interest in seeing it through to the end.
Books one and two worked well enough as a story arch in of themselves. I don't feel the need to finish the series; what I've read of it so far just makes what I have read worse by association. I DNF'd here.
Conclusion: Witchcraft-Themed Male Ego-Stroking
The Demon Hunter/Birthright series isn't the worst of the mass-produced male-fantasy-harem genre, but it also isn't particularly good. If you have access to it for cheap/free, and already read the genre, then the first to books might give you some entertainment value, so for that, they do their job well enough. But there are definitely better books out there.
For those who aren't already particular fans of the genre, I'd give this one a hard pass.
June 10, 2021
Fun new lite Harem
The new series by reliable author. Nothing super over the top here but it's fun the way the application of chemistry and science is helping in updating Spell craft of old Especially when dealing with demons. So far not too much of a dark side though it could go either way in the future. The Harem is lite and the sex is not over the top and not absolutely necessary for story progression... Yet. But considering 1 of the female leaves is a Succubus it's inevitable. This 1st book dealt mostly with the MC, jimmy, learning about his ancestral past and having to start to deal with debts from his grandmother. This of course requires him to learn sorcery Which it seems runs in the family. However his chemistry background seems to enhance his abilities as he is applied modern techniques to old processes to improve them and purify them. Quite fun.I look forward to the next book and hopefully more of this Type of application of science to magic will continue.
The new series by reliable author. Nothing super over the top here but it's fun the way the application of chemistry and science is helping in updating Spell craft of old Especially when dealing with demons. So far not too much of a dark side though it could go either way in the future. The Harem is lite and the sex is not over the top and not absolutely necessary for story progression... Yet. But considering 1 of the female leaves is a Succubus it's inevitable. This 1st book dealt mostly with the MC, jimmy, learning about his ancestral past and having to start to deal with debts from his grandmother. This of course requires him to learn sorcery Which it seems runs in the family. However his chemistry background seems to enhance his abilities as he is applied modern techniques to old processes to improve them and purify them. Quite fun.I look forward to the next book and hopefully more of this Type of application of science to magic will continue.
March 24, 2024
This is my review of books 1-2 which are fairly similar.
Summary:
Pros - detailed sex scenes, accessible prose, decent worldbuilding
Cons - long series risks stretching out the plot, nonconsent elements, many plotholes and dumb MC decisions.
I've read the Makalang series by the same author and it was pretty good, up to a point. First, this is smut (erotica) with fantasy horror trappings. Many reviewers appear not to understand what smut is despite heavy disclaimers and pretty transparent covers. Also some of the comments make a big deal out of the series being called 'demon hunter' when the MC isn't hunting demons. It's 'demon hunter' in the same vein as 'MILF Hunter', really not that complicated, guys. If that's the part that annoys you, you might as well stop reading.
The book is about sex, lots of it. It's certainly the main reason why I'm reading it and not Rachel Aaron or Hailey Piper, authors who don't rely on sex to sell books. If you want urban fantasy or horror, just read them, they're great. If you want that plus smut, read this. Dalton writes excellent smut, very detailed scenes, frequent enough to be welcome but not too frequent to overload the story elements. This balance of sex and story is very rare in this genre and precious.
The story elements are also interesting, if a bit contrived. The MC is a chemistry grad student who receives an inheritance that gives him magic powers and, very quickly, nets him a succubus. This is an extremely well-trodden trope, what Dalton does that makes it a little more interesting is that the MC uses his science background to improve his magic abilities in a way that mostly makes sense. It makes sense logically I mean and it's easy to follow. It doesn't really make sense that he's the first wizard to come up with this, nor that he would just happen to have the right skillset (latin and chemistry) to be effective. One of his improvements saves Hell 31 million dollars and no one thinks to question if it could be done again or why no one else thought of it before. It reminds me a lot of the Daniel Black series, though unlike that one, Dalton at least knows none of his readers really care about fantasy chemistry lmao.
Although I said it's fantasy/horror, it's lacking in the horror part. The demons we meet are very easygoing and human, including the succubus Katarina. I kept expecting something like Suspiria or The Neon Demon where the sex turned into a nightmare, especially because it's so heavily focused on dreaming, but it didn't materialize.
However, there's a lot in it that is pretty nightmarish, including some very graphic description of SA and torture in book 2. Also, Katarina's character is pretty awful. Once bound she's the MC's slave--the book never explicitly calls this out though-- and he dresses her like a doll everyday, very male gaze heavy. He loves her but she's a demon, even though she was once a human suicide victim, and so is incapable of love. I'm sure that will eventually get fixed. He also has a familiar who was also once human and now lives as both a cat and in his dreams and he can come in and reshape her body at will and it is also feels very dollhouse-like. All these women want to do is serve their master and have lots of sex.
In similar stories i've read where the MC gets a demon or a genie or whatever, consent and power is a big focus that weighs on the male MC who want to give as much freedom as possible rather than creepily controlling them like an abusive sociopath. This is not something the MC in this series ever considers once, nor does anyone else, including his human girlfriends who are all fine with it. Yes this is harem lit so every book needs to have the MC collecting 1-2 more girls. No guys of course, even the elemental spirits that power his magic wand are hot women.
The MC also does lots of dumb things. In the first book some demons are looking for him because he bound the succubus and so...he tries to bind one of the demons. At no point does he think about what would happen next, that one demon vanishes so Hell sends two to look for her and then one of those disappears...does he think they'll just give up or something? Who knows! In book two he learns that he's invisible to evil wizards that want to track him down and so he...goes to talk to them, revealing himself, and then they fight, and he loses because he's not instantly an expert battlemage or whatever. And he's way too trusting of demons in general but Dalton doesn't explain why or do any foreshadowing about a betrayal.
If you can tolerate these annoying plotholes and creepy men writing women stuff, it's a great series. If you can't, you should avoid it, but the whole genre is unfortunately like this, Dalton at least is a good writer otherwise.
Summary:
Pros - detailed sex scenes, accessible prose, decent worldbuilding
Cons - long series risks stretching out the plot, nonconsent elements, many plotholes and dumb MC decisions.
I've read the Makalang series by the same author and it was pretty good, up to a point. First, this is smut (erotica) with fantasy horror trappings. Many reviewers appear not to understand what smut is despite heavy disclaimers and pretty transparent covers. Also some of the comments make a big deal out of the series being called 'demon hunter' when the MC isn't hunting demons. It's 'demon hunter' in the same vein as 'MILF Hunter', really not that complicated, guys. If that's the part that annoys you, you might as well stop reading.
The book is about sex, lots of it. It's certainly the main reason why I'm reading it and not Rachel Aaron or Hailey Piper, authors who don't rely on sex to sell books. If you want urban fantasy or horror, just read them, they're great. If you want that plus smut, read this. Dalton writes excellent smut, very detailed scenes, frequent enough to be welcome but not too frequent to overload the story elements. This balance of sex and story is very rare in this genre and precious.
The story elements are also interesting, if a bit contrived. The MC is a chemistry grad student who receives an inheritance that gives him magic powers and, very quickly, nets him a succubus. This is an extremely well-trodden trope, what Dalton does that makes it a little more interesting is that the MC uses his science background to improve his magic abilities in a way that mostly makes sense. It makes sense logically I mean and it's easy to follow. It doesn't really make sense that he's the first wizard to come up with this, nor that he would just happen to have the right skillset (latin and chemistry) to be effective. One of his improvements saves Hell 31 million dollars and no one thinks to question if it could be done again or why no one else thought of it before. It reminds me a lot of the Daniel Black series, though unlike that one, Dalton at least knows none of his readers really care about fantasy chemistry lmao.
Although I said it's fantasy/horror, it's lacking in the horror part. The demons we meet are very easygoing and human, including the succubus Katarina. I kept expecting something like Suspiria or The Neon Demon where the sex turned into a nightmare, especially because it's so heavily focused on dreaming, but it didn't materialize.
However, there's a lot in it that is pretty nightmarish, including some very graphic description of SA and torture in book 2. Also, Katarina's character is pretty awful. Once bound she's the MC's slave--the book never explicitly calls this out though-- and he dresses her like a doll everyday, very male gaze heavy. He loves her but she's a demon, even though she was once a human suicide victim, and so is incapable of love. I'm sure that will eventually get fixed. He also has a familiar who was also once human and now lives as both a cat and in his dreams and he can come in and reshape her body at will and it is also feels very dollhouse-like. All these women want to do is serve their master and have lots of sex.
In similar stories i've read where the MC gets a demon or a genie or whatever, consent and power is a big focus that weighs on the male MC who want to give as much freedom as possible rather than creepily controlling them like an abusive sociopath. This is not something the MC in this series ever considers once, nor does anyone else, including his human girlfriends who are all fine with it. Yes this is harem lit so every book needs to have the MC collecting 1-2 more girls. No guys of course, even the elemental spirits that power his magic wand are hot women.
The MC also does lots of dumb things. In the first book some demons are looking for him because he bound the succubus and so...he tries to bind one of the demons. At no point does he think about what would happen next, that one demon vanishes so Hell sends two to look for her and then one of those disappears...does he think they'll just give up or something? Who knows! In book two he learns that he's invisible to evil wizards that want to track him down and so he...goes to talk to them, revealing himself, and then they fight, and he loses because he's not instantly an expert battlemage or whatever. And he's way too trusting of demons in general but Dalton doesn't explain why or do any foreshadowing about a betrayal.
If you can tolerate these annoying plotholes and creepy men writing women stuff, it's a great series. If you can't, you should avoid it, but the whole genre is unfortunately like this, Dalton at least is a good writer otherwise.
September 25, 2023
1.5 rounded up to 2.
Believing things without evidence just ran too counter to how I'd lived my life up to now. One did not have faith in chemical processes. They either worked or they didn't, and if they didn't, there were reasons.
Setting:
This is an urban fantasy that takes place in a modern day town.
Characters:
Jimmy: Jimmy’s only personality trait is being incredibly accepting of anything that happens in his life.
Katarina: Katarina’s entire character is summed up by the fact she is a succubus. She enjoys sex and is happy to do whatever the person in charge of her orders her to.
Plot:
Jimmy’s grandmother dies in a mysterious fashion and leaves behind a strange collection of objects for him and, apparently, a sizable debt. In short order, Jimmy learns that magic is real, he’s been being prepared to be a very powerful wizard his whole life, and his grandmother’s debt to hell has fallen on his shoulders now.
My Thoughts:
This is one of the books of all time. It is so extremely okay. It is, perhaps, mediocrity incarnate.
None of the characters have well-defined or interesting personalities. Jimmy’s over acceptance of things is a tad bit grating but it sort of has to happen for plot reasons. If Jimmy had a mental breakdown about his grandmother working with hell there couldn’t be much of a story. The women are generally pretty and smart but not in a way that would make them worthy of a story on their own.
The plot sort of just happens without Jimmy encountering any meaningful obstacles or difficulties. Hell isn’t even really upset that he essentially stole a demon from them; they simply tack the cost of Katarina onto his existing debt.
Despite all of this complaining these are actually minor issues that would be easy enough to accept or overlook… if there were anything going on in the book that was worthy of focusing on instead. The only even remotely interesting thing is the general idea of taking centuries old magic formulas and trying to decipher what was actually being done to improve upon it. That is an interesting idea but it’s very much not the focus of what Jimmy is doing, it's just something that happens now and then in fairly short segments.
You certainly could read this, but I’m finding it hard to say why you should.
Believing things without evidence just ran too counter to how I'd lived my life up to now. One did not have faith in chemical processes. They either worked or they didn't, and if they didn't, there were reasons.
Setting:
This is an urban fantasy that takes place in a modern day town.
Characters:
Jimmy: Jimmy’s only personality trait is being incredibly accepting of anything that happens in his life.
Katarina: Katarina’s entire character is summed up by the fact she is a succubus. She enjoys sex and is happy to do whatever the person in charge of her orders her to.
Plot:
Jimmy’s grandmother dies in a mysterious fashion and leaves behind a strange collection of objects for him and, apparently, a sizable debt. In short order, Jimmy learns that magic is real, he’s been being prepared to be a very powerful wizard his whole life, and his grandmother’s debt to hell has fallen on his shoulders now.
My Thoughts:
This is one of the books of all time. It is so extremely okay. It is, perhaps, mediocrity incarnate.
None of the characters have well-defined or interesting personalities. Jimmy’s over acceptance of things is a tad bit grating but it sort of has to happen for plot reasons. If Jimmy had a mental breakdown about his grandmother working with hell there couldn’t be much of a story. The women are generally pretty and smart but not in a way that would make them worthy of a story on their own.
The plot sort of just happens without Jimmy encountering any meaningful obstacles or difficulties. Hell isn’t even really upset that he essentially stole a demon from them; they simply tack the cost of Katarina onto his existing debt.
Despite all of this complaining these are actually minor issues that would be easy enough to accept or overlook… if there were anything going on in the book that was worthy of focusing on instead. The only even remotely interesting thing is the general idea of taking centuries old magic formulas and trying to decipher what was actually being done to improve upon it. That is an interesting idea but it’s very much not the focus of what Jimmy is doing, it's just something that happens now and then in fairly short segments.
You certainly could read this, but I’m finding it hard to say why you should.
December 27, 2024
The book is a first-person account written by a self-absorbed sociopath who has no drive or introspection. If provided with proper adversity, this kind of character can be interesting enough, especially when humor is mixed in. But you'll not find any of that here!
It feels a little shocking to encounter a book that contains neither humor nor adversity, but somehow Birthright manages it. The narrator has a comfortable and uninteresting life, and as the book progresses, he still has a comfortable and uninteresting life. He starts messing around with magic because he vaguely feels like someone expected him to, and he's nothing if not a doormat. He decides to ignore the instructions and just wing it because... No explanation given. And somehow everything works out for him: Despite never having dome magic before, he intuited the exact things that were important and ignored the rest. For some reason.
I just can't imagine caring about any of the characters in this book. I gave up halfway through the book because I just wasn't rooting for anyone or hoping anything would happen. I'm not sure this author is capable of writing things happening. Even the explicit sex scenes are robotic and devoid of emotion. You can tell the book isn't AI generated because AI generated crap would be more engaging.
Read this if you want to experience a bunch of words without feeling anything.
It feels a little shocking to encounter a book that contains neither humor nor adversity, but somehow Birthright manages it. The narrator has a comfortable and uninteresting life, and as the book progresses, he still has a comfortable and uninteresting life. He starts messing around with magic because he vaguely feels like someone expected him to, and he's nothing if not a doormat. He decides to ignore the instructions and just wing it because... No explanation given. And somehow everything works out for him: Despite never having dome magic before, he intuited the exact things that were important and ignored the rest. For some reason.
I just can't imagine caring about any of the characters in this book. I gave up halfway through the book because I just wasn't rooting for anyone or hoping anything would happen. I'm not sure this author is capable of writing things happening. Even the explicit sex scenes are robotic and devoid of emotion. You can tell the book isn't AI generated because AI generated crap would be more engaging.
Read this if you want to experience a bunch of words without feeling anything.
July 16, 2021
A good intro story
I was a little concerned cause the way the plot went has been done a fair bit before, but I think it came out fairly good. The MC was... eh not my favorite but started to grow on me some.
I do like that even being gifted there were limits to his knowledge and he couldn't do it all right out of the gate. Having a degree in Chemistry I enjoyed this bits as well.
The smut was decent, though if it's like his other series I won't get my hopes up for it staying fresh. On the plus side of the plot gets as interesting as his other series that'll make up for it. The author plainly has certain tastes and things they won't write about, it is what it is other authors out there can be the same.
The important thing is there's potential for the plot to develop more, some questions that need answers, and as such I think it's worth a read, and I'll try more in the series.
Hopefully there's more character development as well, they aren't cardboard at least but could use a little more that hopefully the next book will provide
I was a little concerned cause the way the plot went has been done a fair bit before, but I think it came out fairly good. The MC was... eh not my favorite but started to grow on me some.
I do like that even being gifted there were limits to his knowledge and he couldn't do it all right out of the gate. Having a degree in Chemistry I enjoyed this bits as well.
The smut was decent, though if it's like his other series I won't get my hopes up for it staying fresh. On the plus side of the plot gets as interesting as his other series that'll make up for it. The author plainly has certain tastes and things they won't write about, it is what it is other authors out there can be the same.
The important thing is there's potential for the plot to develop more, some questions that need answers, and as such I think it's worth a read, and I'll try more in the series.
Hopefully there's more character development as well, they aren't cardboard at least but could use a little more that hopefully the next book will provide
November 18, 2025
Demons hunted by Jimmy: 0
Jimmys hunted by Demons: 1
So much for „Demon Hunter“. The title could not be any more wrong.
Jimmy gets introduced to the supernatural world by some books he inherited from his grandmother. The first thing he did - bind a demon to his soul. A succubus, at least he chose well.
Shortly after some more powerful demons come looking for succubus Katarina. What does Jimmy do? Learn power magic to fight them? Get away? No, he tries to bind them once again. Of course this fails - who would have thought? Now because he „stole“ the succubus and because of some open debts of grandma - so much for „birthright“, seriously this title… - he becomes an agent (servant) of hell to pay of his debts. Whats the next thing he does? Right, make more debts by calling upon a demon for summoning a familiar.
Watching Jimmy was like seeing a small child with fire. He kept burning himself but didn’t learn from it.
The female characters were shallow. Too many introduced in short time. The book was also rather short.
Jimmys hunted by Demons: 1
So much for „Demon Hunter“. The title could not be any more wrong.
Jimmy gets introduced to the supernatural world by some books he inherited from his grandmother. The first thing he did - bind a demon to his soul. A succubus, at least he chose well.
Shortly after some more powerful demons come looking for succubus Katarina. What does Jimmy do? Learn power magic to fight them? Get away? No, he tries to bind them once again. Of course this fails - who would have thought? Now because he „stole“ the succubus and because of some open debts of grandma - so much for „birthright“, seriously this title… - he becomes an agent (servant) of hell to pay of his debts. Whats the next thing he does? Right, make more debts by calling upon a demon for summoning a familiar.
Watching Jimmy was like seeing a small child with fire. He kept burning himself but didn’t learn from it.
The female characters were shallow. Too many introduced in short time. The book was also rather short.
June 18, 2023
Dalton weaves an interesting steamy science/occult story and populates it with fun characters
From the blurb: "Jimmy Kaplan has a hard enough time staying on top of his graduate studies in Chemical Engineering and dealing with the death of his quirky, cantankerous grandmother, who raised him from childhood."
Jimmy finds out that his grandmother used to be a sorceress and now he finds himself following the path of a sorcerer. It turns out his application of chemistry and science is helping him strengthen his spellcraft. So, watch out demons! The occult is light and fun.
The story takes place on a college campus with hot women. So, yeah, there are steamy scenes, just as you'd expect from a harem story. In this genre it's important to make different girls fall in love with the same guy believable. In this case, they even hit it off with each other. Dalton makes it work.
All in all a fun steamy science/occult read.
From the blurb: "Jimmy Kaplan has a hard enough time staying on top of his graduate studies in Chemical Engineering and dealing with the death of his quirky, cantankerous grandmother, who raised him from childhood."
Jimmy finds out that his grandmother used to be a sorceress and now he finds himself following the path of a sorcerer. It turns out his application of chemistry and science is helping him strengthen his spellcraft. So, watch out demons! The occult is light and fun.
The story takes place on a college campus with hot women. So, yeah, there are steamy scenes, just as you'd expect from a harem story. In this genre it's important to make different girls fall in love with the same guy believable. In this case, they even hit it off with each other. Dalton makes it work.
All in all a fun steamy science/occult read.
May 24, 2021
Not bad. An enjoyable read.
As I said in the title, it's not bad. It's not like some deep literary masterpiece, but I enjoyed it. I have a real fondness for modern scientific and technological innovation being used as a lens to understand magic systems. This is a big example of that. I'd put in in the same vein as The Valens Legacy books, though the story is very different in a specific sense. As with most works of fiction, if you want to boil everything down to generalizations and generic core elements or themes, they could likely be basically identical, but that type probably doesn't gravitate towards this genre anyway. I'm very much a proponent of appreciating individual works for their individuality, and boiling things down like that holds basically no appeal for me. So, if you're one who can enjoy a story like this I certainly recommend this one.
As I said in the title, it's not bad. It's not like some deep literary masterpiece, but I enjoyed it. I have a real fondness for modern scientific and technological innovation being used as a lens to understand magic systems. This is a big example of that. I'd put in in the same vein as The Valens Legacy books, though the story is very different in a specific sense. As with most works of fiction, if you want to boil everything down to generalizations and generic core elements or themes, they could likely be basically identical, but that type probably doesn't gravitate towards this genre anyway. I'm very much a proponent of appreciating individual works for their individuality, and boiling things down like that holds basically no appeal for me. So, if you're one who can enjoy a story like this I certainly recommend this one.
September 7, 2022
This is a really enjoyable series. The setting is our world, present day, with magic and demons and a masquerade so the normals don't know.
The strength of this book and the series is the story: complex, mysterious, yet coherent. The power balance is very good - the hero is neither cruising through easily nor totally out of his depth and relying on plot armour to survive.
It's also nicely episodic: each book in the series is effectively a complete story, with its own goals and dangers, though the characters and setting continue from book to book. I mean, I wouldn't recommend starting in the middle, but you could -- later books would spoil earlier ones, but the stories in the later books would still work.
The characters are likeable but not the most detailed and believable. I think they actually get better as the series goes on.
The strength of this book and the series is the story: complex, mysterious, yet coherent. The power balance is very good - the hero is neither cruising through easily nor totally out of his depth and relying on plot armour to survive.
It's also nicely episodic: each book in the series is effectively a complete story, with its own goals and dangers, though the characters and setting continue from book to book. I mean, I wouldn't recommend starting in the middle, but you could -- later books would spoil earlier ones, but the stories in the later books would still work.
The characters are likeable but not the most detailed and believable. I think they actually get better as the series goes on.
January 4, 2025
Ok, if I had a euro for every haremlit series that starts with binding a succubus I'd be rich. Yet, from those familiar beginnings this one quickly deviates into pretty original territory. There's less focus on combat and basic magic than usual, with more space given to investigation, demonology and the spirit world. Also, these books are deliciously nerdy, prominently featuring libraries (with, of course, hot librarians) and PhD level chemistry which the main character uses to improve his spells. The girls are varied, the adventures interesting, all in all a very nice casual listen. NB This review applies to the first four parts of this series which I listened to back to back. In my opinion the fourth part wraps up the story arc nicely, even though there are two more parts.
May 20, 2021
A highly enjoyable urban fantasy
This is a story about an average college student who finds out that his grandmother used to be a sorceress and now he finds himself following the path of a sorcerer. I like how the sorcery and the alchemy that is part of it is related to modern day chemistry which our main character just happens to be studying in college. For me it is well thought out and makes sense how magic works for him. Also there's some nice romance going on for a little entertainment without it taking away from this exciting story. I for one will buy the second book when it comes out I hope it comes out soon but I'll just be patient.
This is a story about an average college student who finds out that his grandmother used to be a sorceress and now he finds himself following the path of a sorcerer. I like how the sorcery and the alchemy that is part of it is related to modern day chemistry which our main character just happens to be studying in college. For me it is well thought out and makes sense how magic works for him. Also there's some nice romance going on for a little entertainment without it taking away from this exciting story. I for one will buy the second book when it comes out I hope it comes out soon but I'll just be patient.
August 20, 2021
4 1/2 stars for a great start
Modern chemistry meets alchemy. It clearly shows that Michael Dalton put in a LOT of research in this book or he’s a chemical engineer himself. The way the MC comes up with ways to improve the “science “ of magic while holding true to the spirit of it is ingenious. The only reason I’m deducting an half star is I feel that the MC not knowing what’s he doing and brand new is punching a little bit above his weight class and winning. It’s like Mickey being better than Yensid on his first day. It’s not a deal breaker but I’m hoping for a little bit of training in the next book.
Modern chemistry meets alchemy. It clearly shows that Michael Dalton put in a LOT of research in this book or he’s a chemical engineer himself. The way the MC comes up with ways to improve the “science “ of magic while holding true to the spirit of it is ingenious. The only reason I’m deducting an half star is I feel that the MC not knowing what’s he doing and brand new is punching a little bit above his weight class and winning. It’s like Mickey being better than Yensid on his first day. It’s not a deal breaker but I’m hoping for a little bit of training in the next book.
April 24, 2025
I really enjoyed this light fantasy harem book. My primary enjoyment came from:
1. The application of scientific knowledge to improve magical incantations was quite enjoyable.
2. You find out through the book that Jimmy (the protagonist) has, um, loose ethics. And the phrase "Demon Hunter" does not quite mean what you might think. This is rather different from the "hero" structure of many books.
3. The interaction with Hell's bureaucracy are really entertaining.
The plot is quite good. The succubus (Katerina) is really a wonderful character. Jimmy is creative (although, honestly, his level of introspection about his new life is a bit shallow, but then, he is 22). I am really enjoying Hayley.
Anyways, good stuff. The book surprised me.
1. The application of scientific knowledge to improve magical incantations was quite enjoyable.
2. You find out through the book that Jimmy (the protagonist) has, um, loose ethics. And the phrase "Demon Hunter" does not quite mean what you might think. This is rather different from the "hero" structure of many books.
3. The interaction with Hell's bureaucracy are really entertaining.
The plot is quite good. The succubus (Katerina) is really a wonderful character. Jimmy is creative (although, honestly, his level of introspection about his new life is a bit shallow, but then, he is 22). I am really enjoying Hayley.
Anyways, good stuff. The book surprised me.
July 4, 2025
And the summer of shameless pulp fiction continues. I’ve really enjoyed this series of Dalton’s. It’s a quick read at only 5h 50 minute and features lots of steamy situations. Where his other stories had a plethora of cringe worthy moments and lines, this one was much more serious than “Isekai Emperor” or “Goblin Apocalypse”. The angle of using science and chemistry to improve one’s understanding of magic has been fun to read and I have enjoyed the narrative as much as the spicy scenes. Thankfully this series also has a number of books in it and while all short, will I’m sure continue to be fun reads.
December 14, 2022
I enjoyed this book, the story is interesting and presents some interesting mysteries to be solved (presumably) over the series, which I find is something a lot of self-published books in similar genres tend to lack. My main concern is that some significant questions have been conveniently ignored (specifically, ). I'll definitely be continuing this series.
May 26, 2021
Better demonology through chemistry
What set this book apart from the other of the genre is the infusion of science. I haven't read the author's biography but I expect that he has a science background and I really enjoyed seeing mysticism and alchemy modernized and reinterpreted through a scientific lense. My only complaint is that the book is far too short but that's the sign of a good book!
What set this book apart from the other of the genre is the infusion of science. I haven't read the author's biography but I expect that he has a science background and I really enjoyed seeing mysticism and alchemy modernized and reinterpreted through a scientific lense. My only complaint is that the book is far too short but that's the sign of a good book!
August 19, 2021
Reminded me of Dresden files, in a good way. without the PI angle.
It's the Dresden Files, kinda. If Dresden was written by a really good porn director. A porn director who originally was an up and coming director, but got shafted and was pass up by some shitty director who uses explosions as filler, so now this good director is in porn to pay bills. And uses a story with like able characters to make the porn more interesting.
It's the Dresden Files, kinda. If Dresden was written by a really good porn director. A porn director who originally was an up and coming director, but got shafted and was pass up by some shitty director who uses explosions as filler, so now this good director is in porn to pay bills. And uses a story with like able characters to make the porn more interesting.
September 5, 2021
Okay this came out of nowhere
I'm not going to lie guys, I came into this book expecting it to be a moderately entertaining, smut-filled badly written with little to no effort put into it harem novel.
This is very detailed, very well planned, incredibly will paced, very interesting, smut-filled harem novel. I love this book. So much so that I was mad when it was over, and glad that I just realized the sequels already out
I'm not going to lie guys, I came into this book expecting it to be a moderately entertaining, smut-filled badly written with little to no effort put into it harem novel.
This is very detailed, very well planned, incredibly will paced, very interesting, smut-filled harem novel. I love this book. So much so that I was mad when it was over, and glad that I just realized the sequels already out
May 4, 2023
good premise but kinda of bloated
The premise of magic and science being mixed is neat and interesting. The problem comes when there is 4 pages of nothing but chemical interaction jargon that is dry as a bone to skip over. With the spells sounding like they came from a high school drama about summoning demons. It made the magic seem not very magical. Overall it was mediocre. I will get the next and see if it improves.
The premise of magic and science being mixed is neat and interesting. The problem comes when there is 4 pages of nothing but chemical interaction jargon that is dry as a bone to skip over. With the spells sounding like they came from a high school drama about summoning demons. It made the magic seem not very magical. Overall it was mediocre. I will get the next and see if it improves.
May 20, 2025
when his great aunt passes away she leaves him his ability to hunt demons. she leaves some spell books. first thing he does is trap a succubus and bonds her to him. he uses her as a sex slave and to clean at first and to find out stuff about the Demon World. he finds out his grandmother or great aunt whatever she was has left him with a debt. so now he must collect demons or Souls to pay off her debt. his succubus and her companion cat are now helping him.
May 9, 2021
An interesting scientific spin on magic and demonology, with plenty of sex and mystery to be uncovered in future books.
My biggest issue with this book was that everything, from the magic to the building of the relationships felt a little too easy.
This book is still a great read and I'm looking forward to the next one.
My biggest issue with this book was that everything, from the magic to the building of the relationships felt a little too easy.
This book is still a great read and I'm looking forward to the next one.
May 11, 2021
Best of his series
This book was about 80 times better than I thought it would be. It’s an extremely well researched world and character and that makes such a huge difference. I also really appreciate the lack of instalove. The demonology is fun and actually makes sense unlike other demonology books ive read. If you’re considering this one go for it!
This book was about 80 times better than I thought it would be. It’s an extremely well researched world and character and that makes such a huge difference. I also really appreciate the lack of instalove. The demonology is fun and actually makes sense unlike other demonology books ive read. If you’re considering this one go for it!
May 12, 2021
Rare find
Great read. Good story with a mix of the harem/fantasy/magic you want from a book like this. So many authors try to find the right mix and fail but Michael nailed it. The only thing I didnt like was the length. Anything under 300 pages feels so short. But the story made up for it enough to still be a 5 star for me.
Great read. Good story with a mix of the harem/fantasy/magic you want from a book like this. So many authors try to find the right mix and fail but Michael nailed it. The only thing I didnt like was the length. Anything under 300 pages feels so short. But the story made up for it enough to still be a 5 star for me.
September 12, 2021
Nice introduction to this series
Good intro to this magic series.
I really liked the MC and his way of thinking in how to apply modern things to old magical things. The girls are okay as well, though it took time to like the succubus.
While the middle of the book was somewhat slow, it picked up in the end.
Looking forward to the next book.
Good intro to this magic series.
I really liked the MC and his way of thinking in how to apply modern things to old magical things. The girls are okay as well, though it took time to like the succubus.
While the middle of the book was somewhat slow, it picked up in the end.
Looking forward to the next book.
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