Leaving foster care, Leia Swanson is about to move into her own apartment with her brother Josh. Then her foster mother is brutally murdered and her brother kidnapped. Uncovering her parents’ murky past as Demon Hunters, she learns she is a Nephilim – half-angel, half-human. Taken under the wing of her Uncle Frank, who is still active in the field, she learns to fight against the various demons that walk the earth, as well as trying to find out who kidnapped her brother. When they discover plans to turn Nephilim children into demonic warriors and that leading them is one of the greatest demons of hell, they have to decide how much they will sacrifice to prevent Hell on Earth.

This is another of the paranormal, coming-of-age, stories that have been popular of the last few years. The plot is fairly standard but not especially challenging and it was fairly easy to breeze through what happens. I will admit some of the ideas are behind it are well-thought out and come out at a good pace, but the execution of others is a little lacking. It is apparent the author has some experience with combat, but the training sequences are quickly over with the excuse of it all being hard-wired in their DNA, which is a shame as they could have been some of the more interesting pieces.

Unfortunately, the characters are fairly predictable from the Buffy-like lead, to the grizzled Uncle. It’s also obvious that anyone not Malachim or demon is fairly expendable and when the demons are more interesting than the leads, you know you have a problem. Also, as a blues fan, the deal with the devil is very similar to that in the movie Crossroads. There are a few errors with the story. The foster mother’s surname keeps changing and the lead kills something for the first time twice over. The biggest issue for me is that the demon they are supposed to be up against is one of the strongest, capable of killing them on whim but the final action of the book comes as a letdown. And finally considering that her mother sold her soul, you can almost guess that by the end of the series, its probably not going to matter.

This story is a light, undemanding, read for fans of the genre only.