Blood Cull

The Demon Accords, Book 18

By: John Conroe

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

Before the end, there is often change, and change can be very painful. Declan and Stacia come face-to-face with the most powerful elemental of them all, one with the power to eliminate mankind before the Vorsook ever show up. It’s time to confront his destiny and decide what it means to be the most powerful witch of all time.

©2022 John Conroe (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

What About The God Hammer

I love every book in this series so far but, I'm beginning to think Declan and his crew need a new title and break-out series of their own. I would love to read a long running series about Declan, Stacia, Alex and the rest of their pack with cameos from Chris, Tanya and the Demon Accords group. I really miss Chris, Tanya, Lidia, Mika & Arkady fighting demons and evil.

I love the way Blood Cull ties what is currently going on with our planet to Gordon's team and fictional world solutions. Too bad our "real world" leaders don't appear capable of thinking outside of the delusional box. I'm dissappointed that soooo many fans don't like this book. Yes it is political and thought provoking - ahem, but with all the crazy things going on with our world, I absolutely LOVE that an author who writes fiction is aware/woke enough to write up some solutions - even though the solutions are outside of our current human abilities to think and create common-sense paths to solve world problems...

I'm flummoxed on this one

Many of the reviews critical of the plot are written better than i could articulate. Bugs for food? Seriously? what about earth and water witches? Finally have a space battle and it was actually interesting--could have been a few pages longer. The ground battle was also too short.

All in all I have mixed feelings about this book.

Time to Wrap It Up

Okay, we all know the main characters of Demon Accords have been OP for a while. Curb stomps are fun, but now John Conroe is struggling to inject some suspense into a forgone conclusion while pulling the usual raise the stakes. Except the stakes are already as high as they can go and the character power levels are so insane that everything except a climactic endgame battle should be child's play. So the MCs get their power kneecapped, which should lead to some interesting situations... which get glossed over. What should be the labor's of Hercules maybe take a quarter of the book. The rest is full of flexing the millionth power upgrade, really cringey moralizing, struggling at tasks for no reason, killing a minor character without much screen time for the "shock value", and your classic Five Minute John Conroe Style Big Battle that most other authors would devote an hour of voice time to. All the while, huge plot points are glossed over with a line or a paragraph.

Oh, and don't even get me started on Omega. Who would have thunk that having a nearly omniscient AI as a character would turn out to make writing a compelling narrative difficult? At this point, Conroe doesn't even seem to be trying. Entire extremely well funded and long established organizations just happen to have escaped Omega's notice for years until they just happen to execute attacks on the gang. And even when he's looking for them, he can't ferret them out until the meatbags do something to justify their existence, after which he'll just happen to find exactly what they need. And this isn't even getting into the incredibly shady stuff he pulls and people just agree with.

This series needs to end. Or at least this storyline. There are some legitimately interesting stories still to be told. The Compendiums show that, at least. And The Book of Levi is a good alternate view of things, even if large parts are rehashed. But Declan, Stacia, Omega, Chris, Tanya, and Co need to hang things up.

Pros? James Patrick Cronin did great as always.

Fun

Fun psychopathic rant about the virtues of ultraviolence and libertarian ideology as vehicles to cure society's woes. Interesting for the focus on radical environmentalist terrorism, and biblical attitudes towards sacrificing adults and children.

I still absolutely love this series...

but I'm confused. I've read and reread this series... could've sworn Agent J (Caeco's boss) in bk 15 C.a.e.c.o. was female but in this one was made to sound male.... made me curious about the when and how of the transition... and i am pretty sure there was a different ending before. all the little monsters coming up from the oceans to cannibalize all living things...Declan using massive power to kill all at once... I did really enjoy the space battle... there are holes here and there in the storyline but if y0u can ignore that, this series is a lot of fun!