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I listened to this book on audio CD. The narration was fine. The narrator did a good job with accents, although many of the characters in New Orleans have no accent whatsoever. While that makes sense for the preternatural characters, it does not make sense for the human denizens of this area.

This is the second book in this series, the Chronicles of Nick. According to some web research which I did, this book is a prequel to Kenyon's Dark Hunter series. The Chronicles of Nick is aimed at a teen audience, but, according to the author, the universe is the same as in the adult books.

The story begins with Nick, the protagonist, having survived a zombie attack. He has been befriended by Acheron and his underling Kyrian. Both have lived thousands of years. Nick's mother, Cherise, gets a new job being a dancer at Sanctuary, a place run by were-beasts disguised as humans. They do not play a big role in this story, so why pages were wasted on them in this book seemed a mystery to me.

Nick is being protected by a Daimon or demon (I saw it spelled both ways on the website and didn't have a text to read) named Caleb, who is coincidentally the star high school quarterback.

Nick has powers that are being developed and he undergoes lessons to learn to use them. He is destined for some great future, which will either go good or bad, depending on how evil he becomes. Various creatures try to influence his development.

Kenyon spends a lot of time making you wonder which of Nick's "guardians" are good or evil or neither. I could live with this and the whole mythological construct of this universe. I could even live with the somewhat contrived premise that the fate of the world rests with a 14-year-old. But be warned, the book is quite involved for a first-time reader of the series.

I have to believe that Kenyon did not set out to make Nick an unlikable character. His most annoying habit occurs any time he has dialogue to speak. When someone is interacting with him, he often interrupts, is rude, makes sarcastic remarks, or acts like an imbecile. His partner in conversation becomes annoyed with him, as anyone would, and then they start to respond in kind with threats that they never carry out. For example, Nick interacts with Grim (aka Death) who is teaching him about perspicacity and how to use a pendulum with grimoire. Grim threatens to kill him several times and allegedly cannot because of the way this universe works and Nick's special status. It just seemed preposterous to me that Death would put up with Nick for two seconds.

So each time one of these conversations occurs in the book, it is a lowlight. Worse, even when Nick is not being annoying or making bad decisions, there is nothing to invest you in his character. I didn't relate to him at all, and could not have cared less what happened to him one way or the other. Of course since this series has many more books, you knew that he would not die anyway which ruins the suspense.

Would a teen relate to Nick's behavior pattern? I honestly don't know, but as an adult I found it tedious.

Another problem with the book involves the fact that Nick has numerous guardians he can appeal to for help. When the football coach starts to blackmail him, not once does he go to Ash or Kyrian for help. Why? If I had supernatural helpers, I would at least venture telling them that I am in trouble. Eventually he enlists humans, Caleb, and Nekoda, whose role is quite complicated, to fight the coach. But it is all so random that you couldn't figure out why this kid didn't have enough sense to just ask for help from his legion of guardians to start with.

Whenever a deus ex machina is needed, some existing character spouts some heretofore unrevealed reality of this universe or a new character pops up to give exposition on the matter. After several instances of this, I would just as soon know in advance what the rules are rather than go through these various explications. Inevitably, Nick is either flabbergasted, angry, or sarcastic when informed of these matters, thus causing the annoyance meter to go off the charts.

I will give Kenyon credit for creating a very dystopian universe where great suffering is possible. The world is filled with malevolent beings. If the world were truly like this, I would prefer ignorant bliss or to be out of it. At first I wondered if this dark vision of the world carried over to her real-life views of our planet, but then I thought that her point is that people need to suck it up, get on with it, and do the right thing.

But I could not in truth say that I liked this book. It was truly "OK" and that was about it for me.