The Devil’s Deuce (The Barrier War #2)

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Title: The Devil’s Deuce

Series: The Barrier War #2

Author: Brian J. Moses

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 612

Synopsis:

The battle to prevent Hell from breaking loose onto the earth continues. Betrayed from within and without, the Paladins struggle in a completely unequal battle against the demons.

Only, several things that most humans assumed to be true might just not be. Not wrong, just slightly skewed. Big things, like God and the Devil.

My Thoughts:

This book continues the great story begun in Hunting the Three.

First, the negatives.

Moses could have done with a story editor. The grammar, etc were spot on but there were several places where the descriptions were almost Dickens’esque in their loquaciousness. I just skimmed several pages at times and didn’t feel like I had missed a thing. Also, the info dumps and theological expositions were a little heavy at times. They would have been better served in smaller portions.  Other than that though, I was still impressed.

On to the positives then.

This was a 600+ page book. Roughly half of that was the battle to contain Hell. In some ways it reminded me of Sanderson’s battle writing for the final Wheel of Time book, not in its intricacy, but in its ability to keep me interested for so long. When I realized this was happening, I was delighted.

The whole revelation about God, Satan and Mephistopheles was quite unexpected, interesting and utterly opposed to my theological outlook. I can appreciate a well done Dualistic theology and when you throw in ambitious underlings into the mix, well, it makes for a rather large set of possible options 😀

The ending completely threw me and made me realize that this trilogy is nothing but a game. Probably the card game that the author describes in great detail in the appendices. Rather fun actually.