Brimstone Angels

A Forgotten Realms Novel

By: Erin M. Evans

Narrated by: Dina Pearlman

Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Rejected at birth and raised in a village of tiefling misfits, Farideh expects a life without friends, love, or control over her destiny. Then she makes a pact with a devil named Lorcan, and everything changes. Lorcan promises all she ever dreamed of and asks for nothing in return. Her twin sister, Havilar, urges Farideh to resist the devil’s sway. But Farideh’s not so sure. Lorcan may be dangerous but the power he offers is exhilarating.

In the ruins of Neverwinter, Farideh’s doubts get tangled up in a devilish snare six layers deep. A succubus playing human pawns against an otherworldly foe sees the twins as obstacles in her path. And Lorcan’s monstrous sisters have their eyes on the city—and on Farideh. There’s no time to question her pact with Lorcan—it will take every ounce of Farideh’s newfound powers to get out of Neverwinter alive.

©2011 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

I think I would have loved this when I was 13

I...look.

Clearly, there's a market for this. There's a bunch of books in this series and the thing is sitting at a 4.4/5.0 rating; SOMEBODY loves it, and I don't blame them. Once upon a time I think I would have been one of them. But today I am very, very much NOT the "target demo," and I'm writing this in case you're in the same position. Five hours in, this book made me look up (and use) audible's refund policy for the first time, and here's why.

Do you know that feeling, when the kid you kinda-know but aren't tight with realizes that you're into nerd stuff and/or D&D, and then excitedly gushes about the events of his campaign and his badass OCs and this super cool character he came up with "but can't use yet because my DM doesn't want to run a THIRD campaign for us so maybe I'll do it myself but I want to use my OC so maybe it's a crossover and I can play but be the DM and anyway--" and you want to be polite, but also it's absolute agony and you also want to scream that no one who isn't at that table is eeeever going to care and please stop, but you don't because then you're the bad guy and clearly he's excited to be sharing, so you just sit and suffer for waaaaaay too long hoping the building will catch fire to save you?

That feeling?

Yeah, this is the novelization of that.

I am fully aware that Toril/Forgotten Realms is, without doubt, a high magic, grand adventure setting, and I don't begrudge a story set in that context. I picked up Brimstone Angels as a callback to my fond memories of Drizzt and Wulfgar and that gang, thinking I could go with a little exciting-if-slightly-silly fun in that vein. It backfired about as hard as possible, to the point where I'm now having an existential crisis wondering if those old Drizzt books were really as good as I remember, or if my brain was just much squishier and easy to impress twenty years ago. I'm afraid to check.

Brimstone Angels plays out like bad anime fanfic. Unlikely Teenage Protagonists #354 and #397 (397 is the version with the Strange Mismatched Eye Colors that everyone thinks are a Big Deal but also conveniently don't impact her life or give her any notable weaknesses) stumble across Chosen One Powers to go with their Extremely Advanced Combat Training and standard-issue-teenager weapons, armor, and healing potions (my DM wants 50 gold a pop, jeeze, these kids throw them around like Monster Energy) through the magic of chapter-1 plot contrivance, and now they must leave their intolerant home to travel across the land and assemble the rest of the spice girls, presumably Holy, Angsty, Plucky, and Looney Spice, respectively.

And if you got the spice girls joke there, dear reader, you've outed yourself -- you're probably too old to enjoy this.

Oh, a crucial bit of lore I didn't know - at some point after the devastation of Neverwinter, an even greater evil ravaged the land. One day, while working on their controversial new "Oops, All Consonants!" product line, the good folks at the Faerun Alphabet Soup factory were attacked by an evil lich, who corrupted their precious soup and used it to twist all proper names in the land into incomprehensible, unpronounceable gibberish. Excluding, of course, names and locales already appearing in official WotC legacy material, (tm)(r)(c2020).

Seriously, from the "secret town so small it appears on nobody's map (so don't look for it on the merch shh)" to the character names--I can't. Even in audio form, they're a blur. It's like trying to recall the acoustic timber of last week's sneeze. Or what you'd get if you tried to read a word search line by line. Without irony, my favorite part of this experience was listening to the professional narrator try to string noises together and not break or start cursing into the mic. At one point she rattles off what I think resembled an entire sentence made entirely of prepositions, pronouns, and nonsense words, and I actually laughed out loud.

That being what it is, I'm not going to bother attempting to pull the characters' name-sounds from memory, so we'll just call them Discount Bella Swan and her sister, Manic Pixie Stab-Stab, and roll from there.

This thing kicks off with Discount Bella, one half of a pair of seventeen-year-old tieflings (and the one with the Special Eyes of Specialness) taking a book home, because see, they're twins, but Bella isn't a mighty warrior like her (also SEVENTEEN-year-old) sister Stab-Stab, she's the book twin. You know, the book twin? The book twin. Anyway, Bella is trying to jump fanfics and become Discount Hermione, but she hasn't pulled it off yet.

And she's not going to get the chance, because SURPRISE! Bella walks in to [home domicile I don't even recall being described] to find that hey! Manic Pixie Stab-Stab has summoned a full-on Cambion devil-man! Like you do.

Bella starts to say "hey wait a second Stabs, you're not the mage archetype, did you multiclass or something, also we're seventeen and you've summoned a for real devil into the rumpus room and that's probably bad--" but MPSS says "LOL ain't he cool ANYWAY I'm gonna go outside and practice being a master glaive-wielder or something lol so you watch this existential horror rando for me k thx bai" and just bounces.

The actual fiend, summoned by a teenager and immediately left alone with her sister, introduces himself as Broody McGuffin, Esquire, who we later learn was just hanging out in the hells when he HAPPENED TO SEE a portal open up next to him and said "yolo gonna murder some mortals" until he stepped through and his magic-ring-that-detects-a-very-specific-family-of-extict-chosen-ones says SURPRISE, THESE TWINS BE CHOOSIES, BRODAWG so he holds off on the murder and says "hey baby I see you're a bookish type, wanna be a warlock?"

Yes, really.

You think I made some of that last paragraph up. I didn't.

Anyway, Discount Bella spends an entire paragraph or two saying "um I think selling my soul is bad?" before she realizes McGuffin's broodiness is making her FEEL FEELINGS SHE SHAN'T HAVE NAUGHT TO FEEL HENCEFORTH *pearl clutch* and says sure yeah I guess, then Broody Esq. blows up her [house] and gets them and their adopted father, Angry Guy Who Is A Dragonborn, run out of town. It's okay though, no one was hurt or even significantly inconvenienced in any way, because real consequences are a bummer and we don't want our sick OCs(don'tsteal) to have baggage that gets in the way of their awesomeness. And in case you were worried, Bella unionizes and renegotiates her contract to be soul-free five minutes later, because we want an Edgy Conflicted Protagonist Aesthetic, see, but also we don't want any REAL tough faustian crap cluttering up the awesome. Can't do that to my darlings.

Skipjump ahead six months and we have a scene where two teenagers (still, again, seventeen) and Angry Guy Who Is A Dragonborn save a passing caravan from an orc ambush, in which Manic Pixie Stab Stab gleefully kills seven orcs off-screen (and wounds two more and argues with AGWIAD about whether or not they count, because remember when Legolas and Gimli did that and it was so cool? Anyway this girl is seventeen and orcs are made of paper mache, I guess), meanwhile Discount Bella saves Rolly Polly Holy Henry from an orc, a young boy with a mysterious past that may or may not but definitely is connected to a broader mystery plot the girls have unwittingly become involved in. But she saves him with Bad Magic that AGWIAD told her to super not do, which he grumbles about for an entire line before immediately leaving his teenage murder machines and their devil-senpai unsupervised so they can chat with actively bleeding Rolly Polly Holy Henry and advance the plot.

Everything after that happens almost exactly as you expect, except that the twins' dynamic and personalities ricochet around like pinballs whenever a given exchange needs to be Tense or Funny or Playful or Lol So Rando Yolo and I just couldn't, I couldn't. I'm sorry. I got to the narrator dispassionately explaining the game mechanics of the hells like he was reading from Mordenkainen's (this is an erinyes and that's a succubus and they don't play nice but anyway that barbed devel pissed off the arch devil so now he's a horned devil and KILL ME) and I just bailed. Maybe the next ten hours are a literary masterwork and I've missed them, but I'll bet you a cookie they ain't.

There was a time when these jumbled half-blank slates of franchise-fantasy-flavored nothing would have been enough for me to derive vicarious excitement from, just as long as Something Cool Happened and every turn and I never had to think about any of it, but man, I am old or curmudgeonly or this is just bad. Probably a bit of each, but the net result is that writing this review was more fun than listening to the book. So maybe it was worth the five hours.

It wasn't, but y'know. It's something.

Good start to the Realms for New Comers

Very entertaining story focusing on Warlocks who get their powers from Devils and the inner workings of the Forgotten Realms' Hells.

Reader does well to have separate modes of speech for each character and stays consistent. However, it is hard to realize when there is a shift of perspective. Most jarring when it occurs mid-chapter especially when focusing on the devils.

My only issue with the story are a couple of moments when characters meet in contrived ways that seem impossible. The city that is in the story is relatively the size of New York yet three main characters bump into each other very easily with no one seeking the others out.

Overall a 5 because it's a good listen. 4's because of a few moments that took me out of the story.

Stunning

Amazing story, and I am so glad it was pointed to in the D&D 5e player's handbook in the entry for Tieflings. Provides some amazing insight into the nature of tieflings and warlocks.
The narration was excellent. I was slightly disappointed with the voice for Asmodeus in the epilogue, as I would have expected a deep menacing almost omnipotent threat, but such a voice would be difficult to achieve without heavy audio effects, which obviously was not the style of this simple narrated recording. The voices through the rest of the book were great.

Avoid Dina Pearlman

I gave this a good half hour, but I couldn't get past how truly wretched the narrator is. The story seemed OK, and maybe I'll read the book at some point, but the narrator sounds like bargain-basement community theater. Over-prounouncing each syllable, and generally wielding her voice like a sledge-hammer. No subtlety. No nuance. It sucks all the life out of the text.

Poor story and narration

The ending makes little sense, and unfortunately the narrator's voice is grating and inconsistent with the characters who she voices.

For Y.A.

If you could sum up Brimstone Angels in three words, what would they be?

Young Adult D&D

If you’ve listened to books by Erin M. Evans before, how does this one compare?

First Evans book.

Would you be willing to try another one of Dina Pearlman’s performances?

Doubtful

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

D&D taken to a whole new level.

Any additional comments?

I try and listen through every book I purchase (get my money's worth). And hundreds of books later there have only been a handful I could not finish. This was one of them. Looking at the overall rating and reading reviews I figured I could not go wrong... but, it just wasn't for me. The introduction of main characters into the story was lacking at best. And the two main characters were... annoying teenagers. It seemed more like a coming of age story, then anything else. Maybe if I was a 16 year old it would have held my interest, but there are just too many books geared toward adults to listen to than that are outstrip this book. So, if your into the series, great, but new to the series and not a teenager, you may want to read more reviews to see if it is right for you.

Narrator

The narrator seriously could be the voice of Velma from the original Scooby-Doo tv show. Too nasily, doesn't sound good, I see why many other people had issues listening to this book.

Great book!

Wonderfully surprised by the complexity and depth from this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for the next one!

Awful

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Narrator was awful. Totally, my fault for not previewing before I bought. The book comes with high recommendations from all over, but the narrator was bad. Also, it does play out just like a teen flick.

Would you ever listen to anything by Erin M. Evans again?

Perhaps, I would give Erin M. Evans a try again. But, I want some good action. There was too much about two teen girls trying to get a boys attention. Honestly.

What didn’t you like about Dina Pearlman’s performance?

Dina Pearlman probably should not be narrating books.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. The characters and ideas sound great when you bring it up. Then you listen and the story is weak and slow.

Any additional comments?

Too much "darling" usage. Really, one character calls the other "darling" and it sounds ridiculous.

A solid 'B' DnD novel

While nothing too ground breaking in this novel, it definitely makes for a decent novel if you have a few hours to kill. Dina does a great job elevating the story with her voices. Enjoyed the Devil politics and there were a few other ideas I might borrow for my own champaigns.