The Demon Spirit

As with the first book, I was both flipping through this book as well as listening to Graphic Audio's rendition of it. I've sorted of gotten used to it. It's kinda nice in its own way, like listening to a movie. Although reading Salvatore's action scenes is where the writing really shines.

As for the story itself, I found it to be more palatable than the first book - at least, some parts of it.

The weak parts are again on the monster army. The scattered remnants (not that they were really united to begin with) of goblins, powries and giants are really nothing more than numbers to be slaughtered (way more “monsters” died than did humans) by the protagonists. The early parts about Elbryan and Pony were somewhat bland, since they're so overpowered; a bit nonsensical too (irritation: Why would you, after taking down the big baddie, hang around in no-man's land for weeks killing stragglers instead heading south quickly to both recover, and to become the bearer of good news? At the very least, go and find those refugees that you left fending off monsters on their own!). Thankfully, these bits are quite spread out so they never got to the point where they simply irritated me in the first book.

Protagonist-growth-wise, it's ok. I liked how the Pony and Elbryan are facing their relationship in an uncertain world. I especially liked the growth of Jojonah's character, and even a surprising return of another character. A new protagonist in the form of a young rogue with a huge ego was extremely irritating for the better part of the book. I found his arrogance and belligerence to be quite forced. It's only towards the end that my annoyance with this new character lessened, after a maturity spurt.

The best part of this second book was the fall (figuratively) of the leader of the Abellican Church. I think his descent into an ends-justifies-the-means kind of way was really quite well done. Even his sidekicks were done well too. What was really weak was how the rest of the church (as well as the rest of devout populace) actually reacted to these actions. The rationalisation and motivation was fine - it's just the way events turned out that defies belief. Most monks are more akin to robots than supposedly philosophical or religious fighting men. There's literally zero difference between generic monks and generic monsters that Elbryan and Pony keeps mowing down - they're just numbers.

The book ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, where the primary antagonist of book 2 is still at large, and a couple of good guys dead. I supposed we'll have a reunion of sorts for the remaining good guys in the next book and the revelation of the true evil. I hope it stays on the corruption-within theme that's just so much better than the monster-army-that-was-never-really-an-army theme.