Book Review: Demon Inhibitions by Gary Starta

Demon Inhibitions
By Gary Starta
Paranormal/Mystery/Sci-fi
Caitlin Diggs Series
Review Copy from Reading Addiction Blog Tours
3.5 Stars

Chasing a soul stealer in her reality, psychic investigator Caitlin Diggs inadvertently travels through a portal to another reality and witnesses her fugitive kill her alternate self in DEMON INHIBITIONS. Assuming her alternate's life as an agent of the FBI’s Preternatural Crime Division, Diggs believes her position might help her capture the soul stealer until she finds he may be part of a sinister terrorist plot to keep humans and demons living in segregation. A girl, whose singing inhibits the evil urges of demons, is on the terrorist’s hit list and Diggs will ultimately learn her fugitive is neither supernatural nor demon, but a genetically engineered hit man incapable of being enthralled.

Review:

I wish I'd known this was part of a series before I decided to review. The first few chapters seemed to spend an awful lot of time going over what had happened before and left me feeling a bit lost. Despite recapping previous events, they weren't very detailed, but there were a lot of them and I really struggled to keep on reading, wondering where on Earth this book was going to take me.

Not Earth, as it turns out, at least not the one we know, but parallel dimensions. Once Caitlin stepped through the portal to the other world, that's when the book and story really took off for me. It's just a pity it took seven or eight chapters to get there!

Caitlin (both incarnations of her) are a well-rounded character, easy to relate to, even though she does deal with things that are not the norm - Incubi, witches, demons, vampires, werewolves and others. There are some funny moments in the book, which helps counteract the tension as they search for the soul-stealing demon. The book was in first person from Caitlin's point of view and while not my favourite, it worked quite well here so that the reader finds out things at the same time as Caitlin does.

The author weaves different genres into one here quite effortlessly, so in the end you're not sure whether you've been reading urban fantasy, sci-fi or thriller. It keeps you guessing until the end, but I think the book would have been much better if Caitlin got through that portal a lot quicker, too much rambling and meandering at the beginning for me.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby