Monday, April 2, 2012

Forgiven - a demon trappers novel

FORGIVEN, Jana Oliver, St Martin’s Griffin, $9.99, 354 pages, ISBN: 9780312614805, reviewed by Jim Brock.

How ironic is it that on the occasion of my 64th birthday the two highlights of my weekend were attending a concert by The Moody Blues and getting a copy of the third entry in Jana Oliver’s young adult “Demon Trapper” series – FORGIVEN? Barry and I were in Atlanta for the Moodys – a group we have loved since our distant youth. Jana’s young heroine, Riley Blackthorne, is in Atlanta battling angels and demons, Heaven and Hell, fellow demon trappers and the Vatican’s demon hunters while being expected to prevent Armageddon.

Riley must keep up her school attendance, homework and passing tests while sortingout her relationship with Beck, with her re-animated father and the above mentioned entities. FORGIVEN is a strong addition to this series with lots of answers and lots of action. I am decisively on record as to my appreciation of Jana Oliver’s talent. She is simply one of the best and is ripe for superstar status once she gets the audience she so richly deserves. The world of The Demon Trappers is genuinely unique and fertile ground for the intense and personally engaging stories Jana Oliver always delivers.

I do ask one indulgence of the author – Riley’s snake of an ex-boyfriend, Simon, should not be FORGIVEN after a simple “My bad” moment. He deserves some terror and torment for being such a hypocritical, treacherous, useless sniveler. Not everything deserves to be FORGIVEN but everyone deserves to read FORGIVEN.

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