Friday 12 April 2013

THE STONE DEMON - KAREN MAHONEY - REVIEW


The Stone Demon


Book: The Stone Demon
Author: Karen Mahoney
Publisher: Random House / Corgi
ISBN: 9780552565288
Rating: A

When the newly-released demons set the Order of the Crow an impossible ultimatum - deliver the Philosopher's Stone, or suffer fatal consequences - alchemist's apprentice Donna Underwood must recreate the mythical artefact before the world is plunged into a modern Dark Age. But will she succeed when she finds herself pitted against a vengeful demon king, not one but two Faerie queens, an immortal Magus with his own shadowy agenda, and her own dangerously unpredictable powers? Donna must be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, but even death may not be enough.

I got this a little later than everyone else, because I didn't realise there was a book 3 in this series until it started popping up all over my twitter feed, but when i realised I had it quick as a flash and it's left me feeling pretty good.

This is one of those series that I just love. There doesn't have to be a reason because everything about it it totally lovable. For starters the idea is unique and... i just cant put into words how much I loved this. This book had me on toes the whole way through and explored so many different things i was continually entranced.
I guess I love escaping to Donna's world because whats not to love.

This book picks up a couple of months after the end of book 2 and It has a pretty dramatic beginning. The plot was seamlessly created and I loved every part of it! There was so much crammed into this book and I just loved it so so much! The events jumped from one to one, the action and romance balanced perfectly and even at time when it seemed to easy for a love triangle to be formed, Mahoney did the sensible thing and stayed away. The story was magical and captivating and I loved reading it every last word.

The settings were nicely balanced. This is the second YA book I've read this year set in England/London and that's really nice, just because YA is rarely set in england. Mahoney definitely knew what she was taking about when describing London, because as she described it my mind pulled up pictures of those areas from memory and placed Donna into those situation. Then we moved back to Ironbridge but during that we venture to many other realms/worlds which was really interesting but Mahoney doesn't dawdle on too much detail which is nice.

Writing. I don't know. I guess Mahoney just gets me. Something about her writing has just made me fall in love. Every since book 1 I have loved her writing so much. One thing I always love about her writing is 3rd person. Every time I read the next book in this series I always get so surprised that it's third person, because naturally you expect a book like this to be first person, but it s a nice change of perspective because not only do you get a better look on the other world but you are not limited to a single characters, which was another good point about this. We switched between characters, allowing us to venture into different parts of the story and piece puzzle pieces together. The description as i mentioned was beautiful and balanced just to the correct amount.

Characters. We didn't see to many new characters but where we did they were all so diverse and interesting. A new main characters was the involvement of Demian, the demon king and the romance that isn't quite a romance between Donna and him. Mahoney played it well though, because as the reader you want Donna to fall for him and for them to fall in love (or maybe it's just me) but nevertheless she stays true to Xan, who surprisingly we didn't see much of in this book. The characters in this focused onto the ones we haven't seen as much of so we can build on out knowledge base and connection to them.

Overall this was the perfect ending. I loved it so much and couldn't think of a better way to say goodbye to Donna and the friends. But I have to thank Mahoney, because, from page 1 I fell in love with this series.

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