It’s hard to like a book when you don’t like the characters. Daniel Faust, the sorta hero in The Long Way Down, is a Las Vegas sorcerer who earns just enough to keep a roof over his head but not enough to stay clear of the seedy side of the town. Daniel works as a private investigator – not clear whether licensed or informal – and takes on cases involving porno producers, half-demons and murders.
Daniel is meant to be the Good Guy here. He takes on a case to investigate the murder of a young porno actress, discovers she was murdered, and works out vengeance on her murderer. The vengeance turns out far worse than he had planned and spirals out to wreck havoc on a group intent on opening the Etruscan Box.
The The Long Way Down moves fast, which is a good thing as otherwise you’ll feel coated with the gunk under your bathroom drain. The characters are all unpleasant, even Daniel. If you think about it, a guy who’s willing to impersonate a snuff film maker in order to have revenge, is not the kind of person you want to spend time with. His heart is supposedly on the side of the good and the true, but his actions show a man willing to murder – but only in the name of righteousness – and to steal and to cohabitate with a succubus.
Sorry, not my kind of guy.
The characters are well done, although icky, and a few are too nasty to be believable. The best part is the setting. I’ve not been to Las Vegas but this felt real.
Most novels with creatures from Hell feature good guys who fight the demons; Daniel in The Long Way Down cooperates with his girlfriend/succubus Caitlin to stop the apocalypse. Daniel is too fascinated with Caitlin to wonder why her boss, demon prince Sitri, wants to avoid the apocalypse.
I finished The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust Book 1) mostly out of curiosity, but wish I hadn’t. It left me feeling depressed and not at all interested in further books about the character. The blurb for Craig Schaefer’s second book, Redemption Song, has Daniel enmeshed in the plots of Prince Sitri in order to keep his “girlfriend”, succubus Caitlin. Anyone with the sense God gave a gnat knows to steer away from demons and the schemes of hell, but apparently Daniel didn’t figure this out. I shan’t be reading this one as it sounds even more depressing and with more unpleasant characters.
3 Stars
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