Knight of the Demon Queen

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by Barbara Hambly (2000)
ISBN 0-345-42189-2

This book is a sequel to Dragonsbane and Dragonshadow, but I did not find it as compelling to read. This may have been my state of health at the time, or may have been a function of reduced lyrical beauty and increased desperation and despair. Other reviewers have made similar comments. However I still care enough about John and Jenny, their children and their world to want to carry on.

In this book, John goes on a quest for the Demon Queen which involves him visiting different Hells, all of which have their snares. One of the aspects of the book that I did find intriguing was the hell he visited that was reminiscent of the worst of our civilized world - advertisements and drugs everywhere, no sunshine or trees.

"Day came. The rain ceased for a time, but the gray blank overhead smelled of more. Te crowds increased, unbelievably." "The noise was dizzying, the sides of the buildings plastered and patches with garish lights and flashing panels of color. Panels of pictures, too, that moved as if living: tiny as a thumbnail or towering a dozen stories up the side of a building whose uppermost floors were wreathed in low-hanging cloud. These pictures spoke, and music - if it was music - rivered from them, but because the speech was artificially produced he could not understand wast was being said."