Daemon Seer is captivating, a dark, mysterious, and riveting book that follows the lives of Luanda and Lisa, childhood friends and survivors of serial killer Rad Sanders. Luanda owed part of her survival to the daemons who saved her life, daemons that have been quiet for years before the beginning of this book. These supernatural beings were her saviors in Talion, but now that they’ve come to exact their price, Luanda struggles with whether she’d rather—and whether she can—live without them, and at what cost.
The fulcrum of Daemon Seer’s drama is the relationship between Luanda and Lisa, a complex and believable friendship that was forged from past terrors and endures despite the women growing up and starting lives apart from the trauma they experienced. Though Daemon Seer is about their adult lives, it expertly weaves their past experiences into the present, exploring how their near deaths affect them even years later and how those same experiences motivate them to live the lives they have now. Thus, when another villain enters Luanda’s and Lisa’s lives, not only are their worlds rocked, but their histories are also stirred up and magnified, becoming as much a part of the conflict as the present travail itself.
Daemon Seer also does an excellent job of weaving together the natural and the supernatural. Luanda’s and Lisa’s tangle with a new villain is accented by their struggles with the supernatural daemons. These conflicts mesh and culminate in a fast-paced plot that hooks the reader, forces the characters into places where they shine, and barrels forward into a fine ending, which combines the best of both the natural and supernatural worlds and lays intriguing foundations for future books to explore the worlds of daemons and what it means to be a “daemon seer.” The daemons in Daemon Seer are simultaneously terrifying and attractive. The toll they take on human lives is unavoidable, but like Luanda does, readers will still understand the awe and amazement these daemons cause, the thrill of power and the hope of being saved that they represent. Luanda’s relationship with the daemons is strained in this book, yet there is the remaining truth that without the daemons, Luanda and Lisa would be dead. This creates a fascinating dilemma in which Luanda wants to be free of the very beings that represent her only hope—and at the end, she must choose.
Daemon Seer excels at all of the elements of a good thriller—it moves fast, it never lacks intrigue, it keeps the reader guessing and asking what will happen next—and excels as well at creating an engaging and affecting story, cast with colorful characters whom I hope will stick around for many more books. In future books, I hope to see the aftermath of the tolls the daemons exacted on Luanda’s family and friends. I hope to see future books explore Luanda’s strained relationship with the daemons even more; I wonder how close of a relationship Luanda could possibly have with daemons who have done to her what they did to her in this book. I hope to see future books branch out further into the world of daemons and involve Lisa once again in this set of conflicts outside her experience.
In all, I hope to see the elements of Daemon Seer amplified and continued for many books more. Daemon Seer is highly recommended—a thrilling and thought-provoking book!
— Stephanie Hill, Goodreads
As a teenager, Lu Darlington attracted national attention when she and her friend Lisa escaped a sadistic killer known as the Professor of Death. She never told anyone about the daemon who saved her life that day.
