Hi All!
Happy New Year’s Eve!
As a reviewer of Booksirens, I’m sent a lot of cool data that a nerd like me gets super hyped about. Things like pie charts of the primary and secondary genres I’ve read (swoon!), bar graphs of the age groups and time periods the books I’ve read fall in (oh my lords!), tree charts of the topics, themes, and characters (all those nodes!), and so much more! The data nerd I am can’t help but get SUPER excited each time my information is updated so I can see all my new data!
Using this data to my advantage, I noticed part way through the year that I tend to read significantly less works by male authors than female authors. For the last year, my ratio has been 18% male / 82% female; the last six months has been 33% male / 67% female. Now, this is probably due to the fact that I read a lot of romance books, which are highly skewed with female writers. Regardless, part of my goal going into 2023 is to read more books by male authors. And what better time to start this goal than New Year’s Eve?
Yesterday, I requested an ARC of The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency by Peter Oxley. How did my first step towards my goal go down? Let’s find out!
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Steampunk
Publication Date: March 2, 2023
NetGalley Blurb:
London, 1868. The streets are haunted by thieves, murderers… and demons from beyond the Aether.
Spencer and Bart are the city’s most incompetent crooks, and they are in deep trouble. Hunted by both police and their fellow criminals, they are forced to consider the unthinkable —going straight.
Forming The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency, they thought their troubles were behind them, but they soon find themselves caught up in a web far more dangerous than they could ever imagine, pitched against demons, criminals and evil magicians.
Why are there so many demons roaming the London streets, and can Spencer and Bart stop them before it’s too late?
Who are the mysterious Tappers, and what are they doing with the women they abduct from the streets?
Can Spencer and Bart change the habits of a lifetime and not only stay on the right side of the law, but also save the day?
The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency is the new novel from Peter Oxley, the author of the Infernal Aether series. If you like dark gothic adventures with a light-hearted twist, then you’ll love The Great Big Demon Hunting Agency.
What I liked about the book:
1. This was such a quick read! It was humorous and adventurous enough that I wanted to see what happened next and didn’t want to put it down.
2. The characters were overall enjoyable.
Spencer and Bart: I loved how morally grey Spencer and Bart were; they were crooks after all, but had never done anything SUPER bad and were the ultimate good guys with consciences in the end. I also liked how even though they tried to pigeonhole themselves into their roles (Spencer is usually the brains and Bart is usually the muscle), they showed a lot of other, I would say equally important, traits. Like Bart with his heart of gold and Spencer with allowing his emotions to win over his brain at several points.
Tessie was fine. I liked the idea brought forth that she was an outcast as a kid and she was the creative type rather than the social etiquette type. I also enjoyed the moments when she let herself speak her mind, especially to her husband. I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of Tessie’s character, and I have a feeling she will just continue to bloom beautifully into a rich character as the series goes on.
Thaddeus. Thaddeus. Thaddeus. The bad boy with magic powers who “doesn’t work for anyone”. Oh, I already know I’m going to fall hard for you. Probably the most morally grey of them all, Thaddeus was only in bits and pieces of this, but I have a feeling he will be involved with a lot of the shenanigans going forward. Not necessarily as a main character, but as the character that always shows up to help out at the last minute.
3. This book does a great job of setting us up for future events. We definitely weren’t left on a cliffhanger, but not everything was fully resolved, if that makes sense. This one also set a lot of foundation for future books to be able to just dive in, so I anticipate I will enjoy those even more going forward.
4. I love that cover! It’s fun and vibrant, yet dark and enticing. It reminds me of Daughter of the Pirate King meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
What could have been better:
1. Based on the reviews both on Goodreads and NetGalley, I anticipated this book to be more humorous than it was. I was expecting a lot of bumbling, slapstick antics reminiscent of The Three Stooges, which it wasn’t. It was still humorous, don’t get me wrong; it was just more “hmmmms” of appreciation than outright laughter from me.
2. Similar to item 1, the action/adventure was not as actiony or adventury as I thought it would be. I was looking for Goonies meets Ghostbusters, and this fell a bit flat. There were several scenes where they were fighting demons, but none of them really stand out to me looking back. Fun enough to read in the moment, but nothing super memorable.
3. There were two pairs of names that I constantly got mixed up when they were near each other:
– the only women really in this book were named Bessie and Tessie. Did we really need them to rhyme? This was a bit confusing to me at first and had me thinking the author had a typo for part of it. Until our second encounter with Bessie where her appearance was described a bit more, I assumed they were the same person.
– Also, Seth and Spencer. While they may not have rhymed, the first real introduction to Spencer and Bart having Seth thrown in the mix definitely messed with me the entire scene and from there on out whenever Spencer and Seth were together. I constantly found myself saying, “Now, which one is this?”
Final Thoughts:
This was a fun little read that was great to end 2022 on. I’m looking forward to the next one!
Final Rating: 3.5 stars
Thank you to the publisher Burning Chair, Peter Oxley, and NetGalley for the free copy of this book. The opinions expressed above are voluntary and my own.
Want to check out what else Peter has worked on? Hop on over to his social media accounts using the below:
Goodreads | Facebook | Website
While you’re at it, let’s be antisocial together!
Brittanica Bold's Book Babblings 