DEMON ROAD [spoilers]

I've previously spoken about how I really love the Skulduggery Pleasant series, and the author Derek Landy has a separate trilogy called Demon Road.

I have several little problems with it that I just want to address and I thought I could write a little review (spoiler alert)

Demon Road is about a sixteen year old girl named Amber, who discovers basically that her parents and their friends are psychopathic demons. They're actually hundreds of years old and long ago made a deal with a demon that each couple would have a child, and when the child turned sixteen they would drink its blood and kill it and then give some of their own blood to the demon as payment for their immortality.

So obviously it starts with her parents inviting over their friends for the grand ol' ceremony of murder, but one of their friends helps Amber escape and she goes on the run across America on the "demon road" with a guy called Milo.

Unlike Skulduggery Pleasant, which is based in Landy's native Ireland, the Demon Road series is based in America. I don't think it suffers at all for this. He's very good at writing for both audiences.

Overall, the books are, as with Derek Landy, very well written, very witty, and with brilliant villains. I love Milo and Amber's road trip, their meeting different villains, their fighting to stay ahead of both her parents, and the demon, who is now very pissed about the broken agreement.

MY PROBLEMS

The problem is that there are certain points where it's like the author was just too lazy and went with very cliche and tiring storylines. There are actually a lot of these, and it never happens in Skulduggery. Along with that, there's some plot choices that were a bit poor.

1) When they're tracking the (supposedly dead) serial killer Dacre Shanks in the first book, they meet a survivor of one of his attacks, whose sister and boyfriend were both murdered by him.
She tells them all about what Shanks did to his victims. How does she know all this?
When her boyfriend was taken by Shanks, the serial killer took the time to explain to him in length what he did to his victims and the boyfriend managed to write it down on a note, which the police found soaked in his blood.

That's just so convenient. I hate this stupid cliche, and I always have done. I remember being a kid and watching Kim Possible, and thinking, "He wonders why he's never successful but if he just stfu and killed them already rather than explaining at length why he did what he did, and therefore giving them time to escape, he'd get a lot more done."

Like why would a serial killer even bother explaining to their victim why they're killing them, how they're doing it, and where they're going to put their body?

2) I found Amber and Kelly's relationship pretty creepy.
I know it doesn't have anything to do with being cliche or whatever, but Amber is sixteen years old and Kelly is twenty. I just find that very unnerving and just weird. You can talk all you want about age gaps being fine, and I'll usually agree. Again, like I've said before, I wouldn't mind if Kelly was thirty and Amber twenty six. It's just the fact that one is an experienced adult and the other a naive and insecure teenager that just makes me feel a bit iffy about the relationship.

3) Killing off characters he didn't need anymore.
People die a lot in Derek Landy's books. In Skulduggery, you can count on at least one violent murder in every book, guaranteed. And it didn't matter, it actually did wonders for the plot by showing how psychopathic some sorcerers are, etc. But towards the end of this series, he went on a bit of a killing rampage that just wasn't needed. In the end, everybody except Kelly and Amber died. The way it dealt with the murders of Kelly's friends especially was just not right. They were set up like important characters and had their own unique personalities and I really liked most of them. They deserved better than to just be killed randomly because they were in the way.

4) Amber's confidence problem.
Since Amber is technically half demon, she can grow scales and a tail and shit, and with that form comes good looks but also arrogance. In her normal form, Amber has low self confidence because she's plain and a bit plump, but when she's a demon she feels amazing. The only problem is that when she's a demon, she goes a bit psychopathic.

Anyway, that confidence thing is normal for a teenager. I just didn't like the whole Kelly thing. Kelly got pissed at Amber because Amber thought she would only be interested in her if she was in her demon form, and it's basically all that "You're beautiful the way you are," crap again.

Like, I know Amber being in her demon form is dangerous for her, sure. But I think there's definitely something wrong with being pissed with your girlfriend that she likes to change her appearance and make herself look better. As an example, it's fine to tell them that they look gorgeous with no makeup, but why is it such a trend to have love interests actively get angry and aggressive when the main character actually wants to wear makeup?

There's something right in your relationship when you can say to your S/O that you want to dye your hair blonde and they go, "Well I think you're beautiful with the brown, but it's your choice. You'll look gorgeous blonde too!"

There's something wrong when they actually get angry and are all, "You don't need to be so insecure, you're beautiful with brown hair! Like oh my God, why do you hate yourself so much? I love you the way you are!"

YOUR GUY, GAL OR NON BINARY PAL CAN DO WHATEVER TF THEY WANT WITH THEIR APPEARANCE YOU DO NOT OWN THEM NOR DO THEY HAVE TO ASK YOUR PERMISSION FIRST, THANK YOU.

5) Glen.
So Glen was this Irish guy who joined up with Amber and Milo in the first book because he had this curse and needed to find somebody on the demon road to take it off him. He was a really good character who especially brought out good conversations, because Milo is usually very silent and stiff, but with Glen around, he and Amber just started getting on really well and the dialogue was pretty amazing.

And then Glen got his undeserved ending by being bitten by a vampire and having to be left behind. He was absent for the second book, which is definitely the worst of the three because it's way slower paced. Milo and Amber's conversations go back to stiff, and then I think Amber breaks his soul out of hell in the third book, which is heart warming and everything, but he's still dead.

6) The Ending.
It felt very much like the author looks at his book, knowing his deadline is in about two hours, and he just strings a load of random crap together and calls it an ending.

So in the end, as I said, basically everyone dies and then Kelly and Amber drive off into the sunset.

But the way they die, though. The way they die is appalling. Characters who were fully fleshed out and deserved better are just given the crappiest endings.

I can't remember who it is, but one of the demons (or maybe it was Milo?) is shot by a police officer because they killed her dad.

And then there's also a thing where Amber's parents had a son at their last turn, which was smth like fifty years ago, and before they killed him and shit, he managed to get his girlfriend pregnant and therefore has a kid who kills somebody else for her or something.

Like there's only so many conveniences you can put in one book before the reader starts to get angry.

I love his writing, but this series disappointed me. To any reader interested in this (I've spoiled so much of it, I'm sorry, but I did put a warning) you can read it if you like, because there are very good parts, especially the witty dialogue. It's just certain things and the ending that annoyed me.

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