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"Repossessed" by A.M.Jenkins

Why I read it: It was a Cybils nominee. I had a hard time getting into this book, even though the demon theme is something I'm quite interested in, from the standpoint of a story I have a first draft of. I suppose I'll have to research a bit the genre in order to finish that.

What I liked: It had an interesting cosmology. The book opens when a demon whose job is to reflect people's sins back on them steals a teenaged body. He spends three days or so inhabiting that body. It was sort of blasphemous, I guess (not that I know blasphemy, but it's probably one of the things I've always been afraid of, when I show people my writing), in that when people died, they appeared to send themselves to Hell, and torment themselves, rather than actually be tormented by an external force.

What I hated: Well, it was quest theme. There didn't seem to be any plot to speak of. The demon inhabited the body, and experienced the body, and grew increasingly disenfranchised with the essense of teenaged boy, growing tired of doing the repetitive homework, etc., while fearing that he was going to be called back to Hell at any minute. His goals seemed to be to get laid, to improve the life of the teenager's younger brother (noble), and to save the soul of the school bully, before the bully sent himself to Hell.

What I can steal: The author certainly knows his audience. I see this book targetting younger teenaged boys. Mine certainly thought it looked interesting (not enough to read it, but that's because he's bitter because he accidentally abandoned Book 6 of the Sword of Truth Terry Goodkind series, and doesn't want to me to see him reading anything else until he's got that again, I think). I liked the moment when the main character (Kiriel=demon; Shaun=boy) realizes that the whole sex thing isn't going to work out the way he'd expected, and wishes he'd chosen an adult body who had been at this a while longer.

The About the Author section mentions that A.M.Jenkins has three boys. I think that showed. He knew their minds pretty well. It took me five weeks to get through, but, even if it wasn't the book for me, I can see why it was nominated for a Cybil.

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