Devils

There’s nothing in this book that you haven’t encountered many times before in the fantasy genre. This is a good thing as we already know pretty much everything about how this world works. What is really impressive is just what tremendous fun Joe offers us from this familiar fare! There’s almost non-stop action, fantastic banter and every character is very much their own person, with their own voice and their own bunch of problems, neruoses and heroic moments. The story is built around a journey to take a exlied princess, raised as a street orphan in the Holy City to reclaim her rightful throne in the mighty city of Troy. Our putative Empress is escorted by a wonderful collection of misfits and criminals from the Office of the Holy Expediency, (the “devils” of the title) lead by a hapless librarian, Brother Diaz. The action starts almost immediately and never really lets up anywhere in the journey. I had a moment of doubt in Venice when our heroes set off on a side-quest to gain…