⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book was fucking amazing
I was a huge fan of Mr. Truhen’s first book, The Price You Pay, so when I found out he was writing a sequel, I raced over to NetGalley with fingers, toes, and other assorted body parts crossed and nearly choked to death on my own spit when I saw they had it. I won’t tell you what I did when I found out they gave me a copy to review. Suffice it to say, there were a lot of bodily fluids involved.
Jack Price is a professional. Just ask him. He’ll tell you. He started out running a low-key, perfectly respectable cocaine enterprise. He kept his dick under the radar, not waving it around or anything. Everything was cool. But then a bunch of fuckers fucked with him, and he was forced into life of crime. Well, harder crime than he was already involved in. He leaves a trail of body parts and spent casings wherever he roams. Sometimes that trail also includes friends, which is the heart of his conflict in Seven Demons.
RIP Volodya. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The story begins when a lederhosen-clad, pint-sized motherfucker stabs him in the femoral artery with an oyster knife. Jack dubs this little shit “Evil Hansel” because he’s straight out of The Sound of Music, minus the music and birds and Julie Andrews singing. And this is Switzerland, after all, which is pretty close to Austria, I guess. Fucking Swiss.
Things only ramp up from there. Jack accepts A Job That Cannot Be Done: rob an impenetrable bank made of meters-thick battleship steel, embedded into a mountain 711 meters high with only one way to get up it (cable car, natch), armed to the nines with water and magnet traps, biological weapons, and doors that incinerate anything that comes into contact with them. Oh, and the whole thing is surrounded by a gazillion goons with guns. With the help of the Seven Demons (including his evil scientist girlfriend and a host of other deviants, each with a special, deadly skill), he plans to pull off this heist using the most insane, over the top, improvised tactics anyone has ever dreamed of. Oh, and he’s also going into this high-octane thrill ride with a new name and new personality: Banjo Telemark. That guy. What a card!
But there’s that whole Volodya death thing, and it’s weighing heavily on Jack. The Ukrainian/possible cannibal was really Jack’s only real friend, and he didn’t just die. He died saving Jack by giving him his human pig-meat-polluted blood after the aforementioned oyster knife shanking to the leg. Then he threw himself into a woodchipper. Talk about sacrifice!
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but you don’t need a summary. So, let me share my feelings in a way Jack Price never would.
I loved this book. Not as much as The Price You Pay, but I loved it. The author’s unique style (Commas? Quotation marks? Periods? Who needs ’em?) takes a little getting used to, but man, can he paint a beautiful, bloody masterpiece with words.
I got confused a few times along the way. I lost track of the plot more than once. A few of the scenes didn’t seem all that relevant. I didn’t like Agent Hannah mugging on Jack and rubbing her clit all over him. Doc deserves more respect than that, and I was a little pissed that Jack didn’t just turn Agent Hannah over to Doc and let her have her way with the Swiss bish. Imagine the stains! Muwahahahahaha! These minor peeves may be why I didn’t like Seven Demons as much as the first book. But, at the same time, I can put up with a lot of extraneous and even annoying bullshit if the writing is good and the main character’s voice is strong. Truhen’s writing is fucking amazeballs (Such colorful fluids! Body parts galore! Glorious murderizing!), and Jack Price has one of the strongest voices I’ve ever read, so there’s that.
When I finished, my initial impulse was to give Seven Demons four stars because it didn’t burn as brightly as The Price You Pay for me. But then I thought some more and realized that, compared to most of the books I read, this “four-star” book by Aidan Truhen is a five-star book wearing a Christmas-light G-string and supernova pasties. Only problem is, The Price You Pay is just so good, it burns up all the stars I try to feed it and leaves very few for Seven Demons to feast on. 100. 1,000. ONE MILLION STARS.
So, it’s five stars for you, Seven Demons. Sorry, it’s the best I can do. I really, really, really times infinity hope someone snatches this series up and makes movies. These books were built for full-body consumption. Every scene, every line uttered is pure brilliance and the insane storyline would translate perfectly to the big screen.
Read this book. Read The Price You Pay first, but read this book. Your twisted, tingly little ticklebox will thank me for it later.
* I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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