Tag: Jesse James Freeman

Jesse James Freeman – Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five | Review

Title: Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five

Author: Jesse James Freeman

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 390

Rating: 8/10

 

Jesse James Freeman - Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five

Jesse James Freeman – Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five

 

Disclaimer: Whilst I bought this book out of my own money, Jesse is published and represented by Booktrope, the same publisher which is releasing my debut novella, No Rest for the Wicked.

If you’ve read Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird then this is basically that book, but on acid, and I’m pretty sure the first book was stoned to begin with. Oh man, where do I start?

Basically, Billy Purgatory is a skateboard-wielding badass, who by the end of this book is pretty much whatever age you want him to be. In fact, by the time that you’ve ended up with multiple versions of him in the same room, and they’re talking about alternate realities, your brain is pretty much fried. For that sole reason, I had to give this an eight when I gave the first book a nine – it took me longer to get into it, but once I was there, I was hooked.

And because of the complexities of the story line in the second book, I honestly can’t figure out whether it matters if you read the books in order or not – I usually have pretty strong opinions on this, when I read a book that’s part of a series, but for the first time since I launched SocialBookshelves.com, I just can’t figure it out!

 

Jesse James Freeman

Jesse James Freeman

 

Still, I was super happy to learn Billy’s middle name and to watch his relationship with Anastacia develop. And then there’s the other big positive to reading something that Jesse has written, which is the fact that you get to read something that he’s written. He writes with colloquialisms, but not so many that they get annoying, and his dialogue is razor sharp – I’m not saying that he isn’t good at writing descriptively, but dialogue is definitely his strength.

Overall, if you read and enjoyed the first Billy Purgatory book, then you should definitely think about reading this one too. If you haven’t read the first book, go and read that, see what you think, and follow it up with this one if you get hooked into the series, like I did. Now that’s badass.

 

Jesse James Freeman - Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

Jesse James Freeman – Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

 

Click here to buy Billy Puragatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five.


Jesse James Freeman – Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird | Review

Title: Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

Author: Jesse James Freeman

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 358

Rating: 9/10

 

Jesse James Freeman - Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

Jesse James Freeman – Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

 

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

Jesse has the somewhat dubious honour of penning the book that’s been the closest any book has ever got to scoring a ten without actually doing so. He’s a friend of Allie Burke, whose ‘Paper Souls‘ I’ve recently reviewed, and I had to confess to Allie that his book is better, and Allie scored a nine. I don’t award half marks, but if I did then Paper Souls would be an 8.5 and Billy Purgatory would be a 9.5.

Seriously, I can only fault it in a couple of ways – first up, it took a little while to get in to  the story-line, and secondly I don’t think Freeman should have included the first chapter of the next book in the series as an appendix, because it left me feeling indifferent and caused me to question whether it should affect my review of book one.

Other than that, my god this is good – it’s rare to read a book with so much promise, and even rarer for the first book in a series to kick ass so much – we’re talking better than Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and on a par with Prisoner of Azkaban, which was my favourite. I can only think of one trilogy which has a better opener, and that’s Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. If anyone can beat Northern Lights then they’d score an 11.

And it’s badass, too – I couldn’t really decide whether it was a young adult novel or just a novel – I suspect that it’s the former, and that Freeman just has a knack for speaking to young adults in their own language. He’s got to be a kid at heart, really – otherwise, how else would you be able to write a book this good about a skateboarding bad-ass, a bunch of demigods and a fit vampire who takes playing hard to get to a new level?

 

Jesse James Freeman

Jesse James Freeman

 

Click here to buy Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird.