Review: THE DAEMON PRISM

The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg
Read by Angele Masters, David DeVries, Daniel May & Eric Brooks
Book 3 of The Soul Mirror (Collegia Magica #3) series
Genre: renaissance / fantasy
Format: paperback & unabridged audiobook

About The Daemon Prism:

“Thou’rt Fallen, Dante. Born in frost-cold blood; suckled on pain. Thy repentance was ever a lie…”

Dante the necromancer is the most reviled man in Sabria, indicted by the King, the Temple, and the Camarilla Magica for crimes against the living and the dead. Yet no judgment could be worse than his enemies’ cruel vengeance that left him crippled in body and mind. Dante seeks to salve pain and bitterness with a magical puzzle - a desperate soldier’s dream of an imprisoned enchantress and a faceted glass that can fill one’s uttermost desires.

But the dream is a seductive trap that ensnares Dante’s one-time partners and unlocks his own deepest fears. Haunted, blind, driven to the verges of the world, Dante risks eternal corruption and the loss of everything he values to unravel a mystery of ancient magic, sacred legend, and divine truth…

Source: Info in the About The Daemon Prism was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7854686-the-daemon-prism on 29/08/2012.

[Image Credit: Wes-Talbott]

Review:

This is my first audiobook I listened to where there are four readers involved and I find that I kinda liked it! It's not a dramatization but the book is written in such a way that there is a swapping of POVs as the story is told. And the narrators take turns as their character's POV tells the story. Really fun to listen to. Specially that I've listened to David DeVries and Angele Masters with Books one and two respectively already. But even that got trumped up in awesomeness with the twistiness of the plot! I knew from Book 1 and Book 2 that the plot is devilishly twisty, still the plot threw me a surprise or two. Ah, lots and lots of brownie points to the author for the twisty plot!! However the theme of Dante batting for the other team is rapidly becoming a tired old tune that I wish Carol Berg hasn't recycled that theme. Also, there were many little holes in the plot. Sure, irritating... But, I choose to ignore it... because I also like Carol Berg's rendition of the Christian's "War In Heaven" idea as the story's over-arc-ing plot. Just familiar enough to make a solid connection with the reader. Different enough to hold the reader's interest. And woven masterfully into the tapestry of this trilogy to make it the book's own. Fab! I also noticed that the titles of the books in this trilogy contains words pertaining to optics. Spirit Lens. Soul Mirror. And now Daemon Prism. I wondered about it from the start and the answer slowly unfolded as the story progressed. Wonderful! ....Having said that, I don't know... maybe because I've read the Lighthouse doulogy first that now I am expecting the same level of awesomeness that the expectation bar has been set a bit too high and consequently I was a bit disappointed with this trilogy. And the reason for that disappointment, I could not pin point other than that maybe because the bar of expectation was high. So hopefully for you (who hasn't read the Lighthouse doulogy) this would not be the case and would enjoy this book even more than I did. My only advise is, don't read this book on it's own, gotta read Book 1 and Book 2 first, or this book wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4
Story itself = 4
Ending = 4
World building = 4
Cover art = 4
Pace = (21.5-hour listening time)
Plot = 4.5
Narrators = 4.5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries


Thank you to Me And Reading for hosting a giveaway and made it possible for me to win a print copy of The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg.