Rachel Reviews - Devil Music

Devil Music by Carly Orosz

* Provided by the author for review.

4 out of 5 Gnomes

Devil Music is book that has over 650 pages and is about 80’s metal, drugs, demons, magic, serial killers and televangelists. There is no way to give this book a proper review in just a few short paragraphs, so please bear with me if this takes some time.

Cain is a gentle, blue-scaled demon with hooves, horns, and talons and has been enslaved by a human sorcerer, Mr. Warwick, for 10 years. He also helps Mr. Warwick’s sons, Lance and Steve, with their magic. The only thing that Cain really has is metal music on his radio, and even that is limited. The older, and heavily favored, son Lance has a new crush on a girl at least once a week, so imagine the surprise when he pines for a girl who shot him down for several weeks. Mr. Warwick is pleased by his son sticking with something for longer than a few days and wishes to encourage this crush to something more, but there are two problems: 1) She’s across the country in LA and 2) She’s the daughter of Mr. Warwick’s new client, Rev. Breen. To resolve this, Mr. Warwick decides to send Cain to LA to find the girl, Michelle, and bring her back to New York of her own volition, where he will give her a love potion that will endear her to Lance.

After Cain is sent to LA, he becomes el animal, a crazy, homeless rat-catcher for a poor Hispanic neighborhood. Then he becomes a guitarist, playing outside clubs to make some money, using his magic to provide the electricity he needs for his electric guitar. Then he becomes a major star after signing record deal with Daggerspoint Records, THE company all the musicians want to sign with. His bandmates are the only three known survivors of The Engineer, a serial killer who targets up and coming young rock stars. After their encounters, each of the musicians (Izzy on drums, Vince on vocals, Sammi on bass) realize they have magic abilities (Izzy changes into animals, Vince reads minds and sucks souls, Sammi controls electricity) and some serious mental/emotions issues (Izzy lost some IQ points, Vince is mopey and morbid, Sammi does drugs).

The Engineer has not been stopped, or even really looked into, because Rev. Nathaniel Breen has been preaching that The Engineer is made up by rock stars to cover up their satanic rituals and killings. Even if the police wanted to look into these, they’re busy with another guy who killed his own mother and does, in fact, also play a part in this story.

To make a long story short, oh…too late.

I’ll admit, sometimes there’s so much going on in this book, it can be difficult to keep track of it. At the same time, though, I don’t think that this story could be broken into two or more books. You just need to keep going like you would in a marathon.

While the story itself can be confusing, and some aspects predictable, I had fun reading it. I learned some new vocabulary words that sound more interesting than Shakespearean insults – “Bloviating, mendacity-minded frauds”. I also found that while the storyline has predictability, the characters do not. An intellectual insight from Izzy or a kind word from Vince and my attention is kept because it catches me off guard and adds to the depths of the characters. The idea of chocolate and sugar being what gets a demon high instead of the same drugs as humans was a funny point of interest. The story is also a lot cleaner than it could’ve been. There’s plenty of language and blood, but nothing that made me want to put the book down so I could regain my composure.

Admittedly, Devil Music is not the kind of book I would normally read but it is still good and I’m all for supporting a fellow Michigander. If I were an owl, I’d give it four hoots. For Bibliognome, I give it four gnomes.