Book Review – The Devil’s Apprentice (#1 The Great Devil War) by Kenneth B. Andersen (4 stars)

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Title: The Devil’s Apprentice (#1 The Great Devil War)

Author: Kenneth B. Andersen

Published: 8th of October 2018 (First published 30th September 2005)

Format: Digital – 311 pages

Hello Hello! How are you?

Today I am bringing you a review for another book I read during BBNYA 2020 but since the author just got a publishing deal, the team over at @WriteReadsTours and the author decided not to feature this one as a blog tour! This book was all the rage last year, and I just missed reading it for the blog tour hosted by Dave, but then I got to read it for BBNYA so I was chuffed as it was a really good book!

Thank you so much to Dave, the team over at BBNYA and the author for letting me read this book for the competition. All opinions are my own. Since my first #BBNYA2020 review went up yesterday, I thought I would just keep them rolling!

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to Hell to become the Devil’s heir. The Devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there’s been a mistake and Philip is the wrong boy.

Philip is terrible at being bad, but Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training him in the ways of evil.

Philip gets both friends and enemies in this odd, gloomy underworld—but who can he trust, when he discovers an evil-minded plot against the dark throne?

MY REVIEW

The Devil’s Apprentice by Kenneth B. Andersen is the first book in the YA Fantasy series called The Great Devil War, in which we meet our main protagonist, Philip, as he is pulled into the Underworld.

As I just mentioned, I read this for the 2020 BBNYA competition and I don’t think I would have picked this book up otherwise, but I’m so glad I did! This was a really unique, dark and funny tale that took me by surprise.

This book is set in Hell and I have to admit, having watched Lucifer on Netflix, I did not expect this depiction of Hell, but strangely, I found it fit really well. The author has a way with words and I imagined myself in Hell with Philip and all the other characters. I got really angry at the start when Philip was still on earth because he is very badly bullied by an absolutely awful boy, I despised him and felt so bad for Philip.

Philip is a really interesting character. He is actually a little bit boring, nearly *too* law-abiding and a very good boy at the start of the book, but things quickly change once he is in Hell and his whole personality starts to transform. This was the part I enjoyed the most maybe, because it was really intriguing to see him grow, change, become bad and then revert back. I thought that was really nicely done.

I also found the plot to be engaging. I wasn’t bored and I just wanted to keep reading it and find out what else Philip was going to get up to. This was definitely a very unique plot and setting and it had me hooked from start to finish. I also liked the secondary characters and found that alongside Philip, they were interesting, kept the plot moving and made Philip’s personality change.

Despite the fact that everyone wants to make Philip bad, he refuses and fights against it, which I found to be a good character trait. He knows the difference between good and bad, good and evil and even though he has a wobble at one point, he does that right thing in the end. I think more than just being a fun and unique story about a boy who goes to Hell and is trained to become evil, this book is also about human nature and how easy it can be to go from one extreme to the other.

Trigger Warnings: bullying, death, conversations about damnation, attempted murder, poisoning, depictions of mental health.

MY THOUGHTS AND RATING

Overall, this was such an interesting book and I’m so glad I got the chance to read it for BBNYA. The writing style was such that I just kept reading and I feel like the author was able to build up the setting, the world, the characters, the plot and also his writing style in such a way that it gets things ready for the next books in the series. I did enjoy the writing style, but I have a feeling it will just keep getting better.

There are some important messages in this book and I thought the way that it ended was maybe a little bit strange, but I know Philip will get up to many more adventures in next books and I am definitely going to pick those up as I really did enjoy reading this book.

I gave The Devil’s Apprentice 4 stars. It was a good, solid first book in a series and one that I am looking forward to continuing. Make sure you check out the trigger warnings before deciding to pick up this book because it is dark and I think it could be hard to read for some people as it touches on more sensitive issues. If you like dark, unique, YA fantasy stories with some good moral messages, then you should definitely give this one a shot!

Once again, thank you so much to Dave from @The_WriteReads and the team over at @BBNYA_Official for providing me with a free copy of this book to read and score for the 2020 BBNYA competition. I look forward to the 2021 competition now. I also hope that you will enjoy the next #BBNYA2020 #blogtour books that I’ll be featuring on the blog in the next weeks!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed reading this book, see you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx

ASPECTS RATING

Atmosphere – 7

Start – 7

Pacing – 7

Ending – 7.5

Characters – 7

Theme – 7

Style – 7.5

Total = 50

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If you would like to purchase this book, you can find it here:  Amazon UK  – Amazon FR – Amazon US – Audible FR – Audible UK – Scrib’d