#TheDevilsApprentice – Blog Tour Review

Today I am taking part in The Write Reads Ultimate Blog Tour for The Devil’s Apprentice which is part one of The Great Devil War series. Thank you to The Write Reads for inviting me to take part, and to the author for providing a copy of the book for review.

• Genre: YA / Fantasy
• Format Read: Ebook
• Page Count: 311

---

The Blurb

Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to Hell to become the Devil’s heir. The Devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there’s been a mistake and Philip is the wrong boy. Philip is terrible at being bad, but Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training him in the ways of evil. Philip gets both friends and enemies in this odd, gloomy underworld—but who can he trust, when he discovers an evil-minded plot against the dark throne?

The Devil’s Apprentice is volume 1 in The Great Devil War-series.

---

My thoughts

The Devil’s Apprentice is a strange beast. While certainly aimed at the YA market (I would say anyone 12+ would be a suitable audience) I have heard of a number of adults loving it. This 34 year old certainly enjoyed it, so it may well be one of those books that crosses the divide.

The author has used some incredibly imaginative world building to create a hell like we have never seen before. I loved the whole society down there and how grumpy older people still complained about “little devils” when children misbehaved. A lot of the humour stems from how similar demons and humans are, not that they would admit it. I appreciated the finer details also, like streets and communities had built up the same as we have on “earth”.

The characters develop brilliantly throughout and Philip goes from strength to strength. The story of his transformation was brilliantly worked. He becomes more confident as the story continues and I think we could learn a lot from him as a character. Even the other characters who are supposedly inherently evil are actually quite nice on the face of it, which of course adds to the humour.

The story line of turning Philip from an “angel” to Lucifer 2 is brilliantly worked overall. As it is normally aimed at a YA audience you can forgive some of the sections for being a little too “soft” or not dark enough. Overlooking this you are set for a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will not only be recommending it, but will be jumping in to the next part of the series.

Bring on Part 2!

---

About the author

Kenneth B. Andersen (1976) is an award-winning Danish writer. He has published more than forty books for children and young adults, including both fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
His books have been translated into more than 15 languages and his hit-series about the superhero Antboy has been turned into three movies. A musical adaptation of The Devil’s Apprentice, the first book in The Great Devil War series, opened in the fall 2018 and film rights for the series have been optioned.
Kenneth lives in Copenhagen with his wife, two boys, a dog named Milo, and spiders in the basement.

Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter – Bookbub

---

Please follow The Write Reads on TWITTER for more on this blog tour. They will be retweeting a lot of posts about this book. They are also worth a follow for reviews on more books, as well as a lot of bookish chat!