I'm rewriting my review, which I didn't like.
Okay, I'm one of those who fell for the cool skull cover. And an interesting plot emerged from the synopsis, but as I read it, I was disappointed with each chapter.
Lore
The world of this book is not spelled out at all. There are witches and demons. Witches are good and demons are bad.
This is all that is clear from the book, because the author left the prescription of his world at the level of a draft. Even the important story of how the witch cursed the demon was spelled out at the level: "Here's the witch, and here's the demon and in short the witch cursed him." Why she did it is unclear. I also remember the dumb moment when a vampire appears in the book. They weren't mentioned throughout the book, he just appeared out of nowhere.
And it is also impossible to understand when the events of this book take place. It seemed to me that everything was happening in the Middle Ages, and then Emilia mentions the TV. Everything happens in Italy and you will understand it only from the descriptions of the dishes.
Plot
Let's start with the plot. There were two twins, one was killed by witches, and the other one decided to resort to forbidden magic because of this.
This is what was in the synopsis, which is about 9 chapters of the book. And the saddest thing is that this is the best thing in the plot, because before the climax, the plot is marking time moving forward with childish steps.
Emilia just goes to one place, talks to someone, goes back home or to the cave, thinks what her sister was hiding, and then everything repeats itself with only small plot points. And at the same time, those places where there is a plot are very stupid and predictable.
What about the fact that a dangerous demon in the form of a snake can be stunned with a simple spell? Can you pierce her eyes like a balloon? Or the fact that there is a character here who is described as God's dandelion, well, it can't be that he could be a traitor in the end? You can also recall a very poorly made detective line with the murder of girls, because the author did not try to come up with suspects at all, except for Wrath, especially since it was his knife that turned out to be next to Emilia's sister, which they tell us from the very beginning.
And Chekhov's guns don't fire. For example, in the beginning, Emilia found out that she sees the aura of people, with the exception of her sister. And it will not play on the plot in any way. If you put a Chekhov gun, you should shoot where you left it, and not somewhere in the third book, when everyone has already forgotten about it.
Characters
Both main characters are terrible.
Emilia nine chapters was tolerable. But with each chapter, she looks more and more like Daffy Duck in her personality. Well, the one from Looney Tunes who does what he was told not to do, considers himself very smart, is impertinent, stupid, thinks of himself all sorts of things, which makes everything go wrong for him. Emilia differs from this character only in that she is not a duck.
Wrath is an example of how male characters are written by a woman. He is bare-chested all the time, responds sarcastically, he has a 10-pack abs, and the heroine blushes looking at him every time. And he's boring.
All the princes of hell are the same, the only thing they differ in is the color of the eye, otherwise they are indistinguishable, and only two affect the plot.
The rest are just NPCs who tell the heroine what and how it works and this is their only function.
Text
I don't like him. There were too many descriptions of food (I almost threw up when the heroine cooked food again), the descriptions were absurd, and it was difficult to read. Although this may be related to translation (because I repeat 10 times, English is not my native language and I read books in translation), and in fact the author has a very beautiful writing style.
As a result, we have a very boring, banal story with bad characters, which is a draft for real book.
by mystery5009