Monday, May 5, 2014

New Book Review - The Book of Bart

Book - The Book of Bart
Writer - Ryan Hill
Published By - Curiosity Quills Press
 
First things first, I got this book from publishers as an ARC for review, so thank you Curiosity Quills Press for this opportunity.
The two genres that this book represents which are Paranormal and Young Adult are the genres I try to avoid most of the times, cause in my opinion they are filled with clones of famous series' and mediocrity. So I was a bit skeptical in picking this book up, but the blurb somehow caught my eyes & I decided to check it out. And boy was I surprised. This book did for me in renewing my trust in these genres as much as 'Snake Agent' (review here) did that in regard to Urban Fantasy. It was a fast paced, action-packed, humorous page turner that was really difficult to put down even when I had other pressing concerns nagging me.

This book tells the story of a demon named Bart, who at the beginning of the book finds himself suddenly back on earth after being previously incarcerated in the 7th circle of hell indefinitely for trying to take over hell. He quickly learns he has to find the shard of Gabriel (which was the thing responsible for his punishment as a matter of fact) while working with an angel. And for this purpose he has to enroll in school again (kinda easy as he looks like a 18 year old) to find the person or thing that is looking for the shard to his/her nefarious purposes. And at this quest he goes through various obstacles and humorous situations and overall massive amount of injury to his clothing and vehicles.

Bart is quite a fun character and it is very entertaining to read his story in first person perspective. Specially likeable are the facts that he always tries to do the wrong/bad thing(!) by any means or loopholes to his situations as available and it also helps the fact that he is an alcoholic chain-smoker whose most important desires are always in trying to deflower some virgins. Samantha, the main female character is at first the polar opposite of Bart who gets a bit corrupted by him by the end of the book. The mystery of the villain or its resolution was not that mind blowing and it was kinda easy to guess who the villain is gonna be, but the fun in the book was its sheer unpredictability at times. Readers are always kind of left wondering what bad thing is gonna happen next to Bart and for once in a book the cliff hangers at the end of each chapter were very nicely done and kept me coming back for more.

It was a very fast and action packed read and is one of those rare books that is almost unputdownable. Despite some flaws like somewhat disjointed progression at a few occasions and lack of character development for some of the minor characters and too much cliche high school stuff thrown in at times the very interesting main character and sheer amount of unpredictability makes this a very enjoyable read. I'll definitely check out the next book by this author. 

This gets 4 out of 5 stars.  

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