Review: Slaying Monsters for the Feeble by Annette Marie

Posted November 1, 2019 by Lola in Fantasy, Review / 6 Comments

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Slaying Monsters for the FeebleSlaying Monsters for the Feeble (The Guild Codex: Demonized #2)
by Annette Marie

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: MF

Blurb:
I’m bound to a demon.

For my entire life, I avoided magic at all costs. Now, I’m responsible for a demon who wields magic more powerful than the toughest mage or sorcerer.

Demons are evil.

That’s what my textbooks say. That’s what I see. He’s ruthless, he’s temperamental, he’s cold. But he protects me without fail. I wonder if he’s hiding a heart behind his hostility.

My demon is a monster.

Whether he’s heartless or not, my contract with him is illegal and beyond dangerous. Together, we must find a way to return him to his own world before anyone discovers our secret. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve come to realize something else:

My demon isn’t the only monster I should be worried about.


From the author of The Guild Codex: Spellbound comes a new series that will plunge an unprepared young woman into the darkest magic of the mythic world.

My Review

I received a free copy of this book from the author and voluntarily reviewed it.

After the first book in this series about Robin and her demon Zylas I was really excited to start reading this one. It’s a great sequel. There’s more we learn about the demons, Robin’s family and more. There’s plenty of action and I loved seeing the interactions between Robin and her demon Zylas.

In this book Robin is still coming to terms that she’s now responsible for a demon. Then some strange occurrences start happening, Robin is still searching for answers about her family’s grimoire and vampires are popping up everywhere. It was quite the interesting read with enough adventure, action and character development.

Robin and Zylas are bound to one another, but things don’t always go as smoothly. Zylas has to protect her, but that definition is quite lose and as a demon he is quite different from humans. Something we really see in this book as well as in Robin’s attempts to really figure out how he thinks about things. The interesting part is that while Zylas judges Robin by his standards, Robin does the same. She’s disappointed he doesn’t act like she hopes, but I actually thought that drove home how different Zylas is. And then there are the events at the end of the book. I just have even more questions and can’t wait to see how things play out.

The plot in this book was quite interesting as well. Robin still isn’t going much to the guild house, but she makes a few appearances and she makes a new friend there. I liked seeing how she got a feel for the guild and even helped them along a bit and got involved with things. It also was interesting to see the vampire problem and Robin’s hunt for the grimoire progress as slowly we figure out what’s going on. With a bunch of exciting reveals and events at the end.

One of my favorite parts of this series are Robin’s interactions with Zylas. It’s so fun to read about them and how they interact. I feel like we get a better understanding about Zylas and demons in general in this book and I was happy every time Zylas shared something about his world or demons with Robin as it was interesting to learn more. It’s fascinating to have two characters who literally are so different interact. And they make mistakes. There was this one scene where Robin said something and didn’t even realize how badly that would cum across, but then later she tries to fix it and I loved that about her how she was willing to acknowledge she made a mistake and try and fix things.

I really like Robin as a main character. While she might not be as physically strong or capable, she’s slowly working on that. And even tough her lack of strength, she often gets herself in dangerous situations and doesn’t run away to save herself. I liked that about her and also how she slowly seems to care about Zylas. I liked the lessons Zylas gave her and how she’s slowly trying her hand at more sorcery to be more capable in fights. I also like how determined she is, she really does her best to find the grimoire and help Zylas.

Zylas is a fascinating character. He’s so different with how he’s a demon, but he also has a set or rules or morals he lives by. And he is quite consistent in regards to how he acts with those in mind. I liked learning more about him and demons and their world in general. I like seeing how observe and interact with the human world and how he’s slowly learning more about it. It was interesting to see how new and strange the human world is for him.

There are also some fun side characters. I liked seeing Robin and Amalia interact and like how they stuck together. I also liked seeing Robin make a new friends in Zora and how that progressed.

While this is a spin-off series from the Guild Codex: Spellbound series, so far they just run parallel to each other with a few cross over points. In this book there’s a scene at the start with Robin and Tori at the bar, which was fun. This book runs parallel to The Alchemist and an Amaretto, but as Tori and her friends go someplace else for Christmas, while Robin stays at the guild, that means very little interaction. I think starting next book these two series will really start to mash together. And I am excited to see how that goes.

This book ads some interesting pieces of world building. There’s more we learn about demons, sorcerers and the demon realms and summoning in general. I like how with every book we learn more and there are more pieces we get. I like this world and the two series that take place in it.

To summarize: This was an awesome sequel. I liked reading more about Robin and Zylas. Their interactions are one of my favorite part of the book. They have a vampire problem to deal with in this book and Robin is looking for her uncle and the grimoire. There’s plenty of action and character development. Robin is a great main character and I like how brave she is even tough she isn’t as strong physically. I also like how she’s smart and determined. She makes mistakes, but also tries to fix them again. I really liked learning more about Zylas, demons and the demon world in general. And there are some events later in the book that leave me wanting to know more about what happened and how it works. This book runs parallel with The Alchemist and an Amaretto, but there’s only one small scene at the start and end where the stories intersect a bit. I think in the next books these stories might more fully combine. All in all this was a great read and I really liked these two series set in the Guild Codex world.

4 Stars

Links:
Goodreads
Bookbub
Amazon

You can also read my review on Goodreads, Bookbub and Amazon.

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6 responses to “Review: Slaying Monsters for the Feeble by Annette Marie

  1. I’m super excited for the next couple of books! I agree with you in that they’ll start mashing together soon. They can’t not! Especially with Annette’s warning at the end about Slaying Monsters being the last Demonized book you could read without Spellbound spoilers!

    • I am really excited to see how the series will start mashing together. And that warning made me even more curious as it made it clear they should merge with the next book.

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