Cipher- Larissa Ione (Demonica Underworld Book 6)

Pages: 264

Read Time: Approx. 4 hours

Rating: ★★★.5 (3.5 stars)

Up Next: Bond of Destiny by Larissa Ione

By now, you know I like Larissa Ione. I started with her Horsemen series and moved on to her Demonica series. I love her world building and her story telling, and I think she is a phenomenal writer. However, and it pains me to say this, Cipher was not what I had hoped it would be, and I did not enjoy it. I gave it three starts for a reason, though.

Cipher wasn’t necessarily a poorly-written book. I found no faults with editing, grammar, punctuation, or timing. What frustrated me were the characters and the storyline. Part of that may be my fault, though. I didn’t realize that Her Guardian Angel was supposed to be read between Hawkyn and Cipher, so, when I started Cipher, I was surprised that I had no idea what was going on. I had gotten a glimpse of Cipher in Hawkyn, so I was completely caught off-guard to start Cipher’s book and find that he had been kidnapped by Flail, who had betrayed him and had killed one of Azagoth’s young memitim children, and was being held captive by Bael and Moloch, two weirdo fallen angel brothers. Talk about a surprise.

I could live with all that, though. My discontent didn’t come from skipping parts of the story, but from how frustrated I was with everyone involved. Cipher had managed to hold out for seven or eight months, and that’s a long time to be tortured and get the shit beaten out of you without squealing. When your boss is the Grim Reaper, you gotta keep your trap shut about his secrets. Cipher doesn’t just work for Azagoth, he’s his cybersecurity guy. Wild. Cipher has so much info on Azagoth’s realm, his work, and a list of his kids that had yet to be retrieved from the mortal world, which was the reason Bael and Moloch had Cipher snatched to begin with. This is the beginning of my annoyance about the whole thing. Azagoth, who is trapped to Sheoul-gra, is notorious about his ability to reach the deepest pits of Hell and the highest points of Heaven. You’re telling me that he couldn’t figure out a way to free Cipher from Bael’s prison??? In fact, freeing Cipher was low on Azagoth’s Give-A-Shit list, and maybe it’s because ol’ Az’s age that he didn’t seem to give two shits that his computer guy is being tortured for information, but come on. For being so adamant about retrieving his kids, Azagoth didn’t care that his kids were at risk with Cipher being snatched up. Not to mention, the man has the King of Hell and the Prince of Heaven on speed dial, and he couldn’t call them up to ask them a measly favor? I mean, he does eventually come through, but he waits a damned long time to do it.

Now let’s get onto the man himself, Cipher. To sum up what I feel about him, he pissed me the fuck off. Larissa wrote Cipher in such a way, that she had me genuinely frothing at the mouth in pure rage at this man. Rather than seeing that as a negative aspect of this book, I would argue it is a positive one, instead. I doubt it was her intention that she made Cipher unlikeable and irritating, but it’s proof of her writing skills that she was able to illicit such a response from me. Just thinking about him is getting me amped up. I’m sure it was no easy feat for Cipher to survive 8 months of gruesome torture and having to survive in a fighting pit, but he had a lot of time to think up a good plan, and he used it to daydream about Lyre’s body the entire time. (We’ll get to Lyre in a minute, because I didn’t like her, either.) When Bael sends in Flail (fuck that bitch) to torture Cipher, he caves almost immediately and decides he would give up just a scoonch of the information Bael wants. A list of 40 of Azagoth’s teenage and younger children that they had been trying to rescue and take to Sheoul-gra to make sure they were safe. Cipher gives it up hoping that the kids had already been retrieved, so he can get his wings unbound and can figure out a way to escape. A stupid ass, bullshit plan if I’ve ever heard one. Lo and behold, he gets a kid murdered in cold blood. After that, every single plan he comes up with fails. You would think that a cyber nerd would realize that accessing Wi-Fi on a secured network would probably flag some sort of alarm, especially if the admin monitoring the network are fucking magical demon wizards, but I digress. While he’s plotting all of this, Hawkyn and the Boys are plotting on how to rescue Cipher yet, in the next scene, they’re hanging out eating fucking cake and don’t seem all that concerned. Cipher starts planning on how to escape Bael and, in a last battle, actually manages to kill him. Or so he thought. All he really did was make Moloch more powerful and start off a whole new prophecy in which Heaven is supposed to fall. Yay, Cipher. Good job, buddy.

Lyre.

By all that’s holy and unholy, I wish Lyre would have been loved more as a child. Very rarely have I encountered a more useless female main character. The main theme of this book must have been about how impulsiveness will get you killed, because both Lyre and Cipher are poster children for dumb ass impulsive decisions. After Lyre was kicked from Heaven, she could have stayed a fallen and worked on her own to get revenge or, and here’s a thought, get therapy, but she decided to throw her lot in with an evil overlord instead. Sold her soul for revenge she never even got. She wanted to be evil so badly, and couldn’t even manage that. As a True Fallen angel, she was just as weak as she had been in Heaven and her niche research skills didn’t help her at all. Girl, get the hell up off the ground! While I understand that she was trapped by her stupid ass decision to enter Sheoul and work for Bael, she didn’t try at all to get free until Cipher came along and she threw her lot in with him. She stopped Cipher from killing Flail, which would have done everyone a favor, and was basically useless in the final escape from Bael’s territory.

I’m exhausted. I finished the book and wasn’t satisfied with the explanation that Azagoth’s daughter was supposed to die because she was a Primori and that made everything okay at the end of the day. A child still died, even if she was supposed to end up dead, but we’re just gonna gloss over that. Pay no mind to the murdered child. Instead, let’s focus on Azagoth working on his emotions and newfound ability to forgive people! That was sarcasm, if you weren’t sure.

I’ve gone on enough. To reiterate, the book wasn’t bad, I just didn’t jive with the characters. I still finished it, it just took me longer than it normally would have if I didn’t stop to pace around my room, bitching under my breath. I rarely DNF a book, and I didn’t have plans to DNF this one despite all my irritation for the characters. I still read through it fairly quickly. All in all, I hate Cipher and Lyre, but I still love Larissa Ione and her writing.

7/10 Recommend.