Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

Deal with the Devil: A Tale of Mercenary Librarians

What’s better than diving into a post-apocalyptic novel? Diving into a post-apocalyptic novel full of mercenary librarians. That is the story that Kit Rocha set out to tell in Deal with the Devil. It’s a tale of a world falling to pieces and how people have begun to forge new paths for themselves.

Nina is a librarian – possibly one of the last around. Meanwhile, Knox is the Captain of the Silver Devils, and he and his men are on the run. You’d think these two would never have the chance to meet. Under normal circumstances, you’d be right. But Knox has been hired for a job, one that requires him to

Writing

Time to fess up: I’d been desperate to get my hands on Deal with the Devil from the moment I heard ‘mercenary librarian.’ I didn’t need to hear more of the description to know I was all in. So I went into this novel (which I was lucky enough to get an ARC of) with high expectations.

So, did it live up to my expectations? Absolutely. Though it did end up being a slightly different novel than I expected – but not in a bad way. Nina is a librarian, and I mean that in the truest sense. She not only was the master of a book hoard, but she cared about her community as well. That is such an overlooked part of being a librarian, and it was lovely to see it here.

The world introduced in this novel is expansive and fascinating – one that I would happily read several more novels about. I simply want to see more of it. I want to know more about what happens to bring down society. I want to know more about the corporations and the people dealing with them. Though what has been shown is admittedly dark at times.

The characters introduced in this novel were surprisingly complex, not just Nina and Knox but also the secondary characters. If I had to guess, I’d say that the next book will focus on one of them.

Development

Deal with the Devil is one of those books that constantly tricks you about what direction it will take. At least, it tricked me. I went into it expecting one book and got something different instead. Then I assumed it would end in a certain way, and it didn’t.

I love how unpredictable certain parts of it were. Though I won’t lie, other elements were much easier to predict. Thankfully, those were balanced out with some great moments of character development.

Knox arguably had one of the best character arcs I’ve seen in some time, though there’s still room to grow. I’ll be curious to see what effort is put into his character arcs through the rest of the series.

The secondary characters were also granted room for growth and development, which is brilliant since a couple of them were my favorites in the series. Here’s to seeing how they progress in future books.

Conclusion

While Deal with the Devil was not quite the book I expected, it was still everything I could have hoped for. It was a fun and quick read full of action, character development, and emotional scenes.

I honestly haven’t read a lot by Kit Rocha (a reasonably famous writing duo), but I will keep the rest of this series on my radar.

This review was originally written for Word of the Nerd, but has been ported over to Quirky Cat’s Fat Stacks now that the site has shut down.

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