DARK MAGIC

When the Devil escapes from Hell, the Goddess of Death must track him down in Narita’s fantasy novel.

The Demon King Lucifer has escaped from his prison in Hell. The High Court, a ruling group of deities, places the responsibility for his breakout on the shoulders of Primrose Titan, the Goddess of Death. The long-lived reaper of souls with the paradoxically innocent face shares hundreds of years of history with the mad, murderous Devil, and not just as his jailer—before the bloody rampage that forced Primrose to lock him away, Lucifer had asked her to marry him. Yet even with the ability to summon undead legions to her side and the armies of Hell at her command, the only way to kill a demon or a god with a soul is with a special weapon: their own unique Soul Dagger. Her search for this object is hindered by a plethora of enemies, both demonic and divine, as some of her fellow gods suspect her of releasing Lucifer herself, while others make attempts on her life to steal her power. As she faces dragons, vampyres, and the Devil’s siblings, her hunt begins to reveal complicated truths about herself, her false indifference toward mortals facing death, and the strange man who haunts her dreams and evokes a past she cannot recall. The author’s sword-wielding, stiletto-wearing, leather-jacketed heroine is a prototypical strong female protagonist, her quiet and caring personality hidden by sarcastic banter and sass (“My friend claimed I had brown puppy dog eyes and that the roundness of my pale face made me appear grandmotherly and nurturing. I almost incinerated her for that”). The novel’s worldbuilding is vast in its mythology and often convoluted, often distracting the reader from the hunt for Lucifer and his dagger. The action has a cinematic quality, full of magic fire and ice, sword fights, and even a big battle between armies, adding a larger-than-life element to the emotional conflicts and political posturing of gods and monsters. Nothing here reinvents the genre’s wheel, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining, and an ironic ending for the Goddess of Death builds great intrigue for the series’ next entry.

A dizzyingly dense fantasy adventure that occasionally gets away from itself.