The Demon's Eye

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you’ve had a good week. Today, we’re going to break the mold a bit and review our first indie book in two and a half years.

Up-front, I should clarify that I’m not 100% on what the official line is between “indie” books and “traditional” books. I’ve heard two different uses of terminology:

• There are “traditional” publishers, which include the Big Five and other major publishing houses; “indie” presses, which cover niche or local markets; and various avenues for “self-publishing”.

• “Traditional” publishers cover anything printed through a publishing house, while “indie” and “self-publishing” both refer to self-publishing

I personally subscribe to the latter definition. For example, I do consider Shadow of the Conqueror to be an indie book, even through Shad self-published it through a business entity that he owns.

This leads me to the other disclosure I need to make: I generally don’t read indie books. It’s not a coincidence that Shadow of the Conqueror is the only indie book I’ve read that wasn’t reprinted by a traditional publisher. (If we count those reprints, then we could also add The Shadow of What Was Lost and Eragon to the list.)

About seven or eight years ago, I did read quite a bit of indie fiction through Amazon Kindle, and was even a fan of Lindsay Buroker’s Fallen Empire series. The problem was that Buroker’s work was the exception. Most of the books that Amazon tried so aggressively to recommend to me simple weren’t in a state to be published. Even the best were in dire need of a few redrafts and a throughout review by a skilled editor. After reading DK Holmberg’s Dragon Bones, I lost faith in indie books entirely.

I do know there are talented, hardworking indie authors who produce quality products (or, at the very least, in-demand products) for their audience. It’s not my intention to diminish the accomplishments of those writers. It’s just that, much like how many fans of the Fantasy genre are abandoning ship in the face of the Romantasy invasion, I just didn’t feel it was worth the effort to sift the indie works of genuine quality out of the dross. Say what one will about the declining quality of traditionally published books, but they are at least polished. I feel like I get my money’s worth out of them, even if the story ends up being terrible.

Still, if I’m going to vote with my wallet, shopping at Book-Off and buying trash Romantasies to dissect on this blog really isn’t a winning strategy. I should at least try to broaden my search area and contribute something positive to the market. Going forward, you can expect to see a good number of indie books during the weeks that I’m not doing a series.

Which brings us to today’s entry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon Del Arroz

Much like with Shadow of the Conqueror, I picked up The Demon’s Eye because it was written by a YouTuber who advertised the book on his channel.

Jon Del Arroz’s channel is dedicated to commentary on current events in the Fantasy and Science Fiction landscape. From what I can tell, he mainly uses this channel as an author platform to advertise for his extensive work an indie author (and comic creator, I think - some of these look like comics), though he’s certainly not shy about sharing his opinions in general. While I personally don’t find it productive to watch all of his videos, if it looks like he’s touching upon a piece of news that I find interesting, I’ll pop in and listen (such as was the case with his discussion of working conditions for authors writing tie-in novels).

The Demon’s Eye was getting most of Del Arroz’s advertising attention in late March and early April, likely because of its recent Kindle release. Del Arroz’s preferred marketing strategy seems to be to highlight the contrast between his works and the flaws of the modern media landscape - case and point, the full title of this book is The Demon’s Eye: A Classic Sword & Sorcery Fantasy. Del Arroz appeals to audiences by promising a return to what the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres were more than a decade ago.

Moira Greyland

You all may have noticed that, whenever I do a Recent Reads post for something I read as an e-book, I assemble the “book” by printing an image of the cover and hooking it over the cover of my iPad. I usually source these cover images from whatever store I purchased the e-book from (so, usually, Barnes & Noble’s online store). However, I was far less choosy with The Demon’s Eye. I just went to Del Arroz’s website and copied the first cover image I found. It wasn’t until I had already printed this cover that I noticed a second name on it: Moira Greyland.

Curiously, the only place that seems to feature a cover with Greyland’s name is the library listing on Del Arroz’s website. His store page, the Barnes & Noble product page, and Amazon’s pages for both the paperback and Kindle versions only list Del Arroz’s name.

I have no idea who Greyland is. Lacking any further information, I will assume that the reason her name was dropped from the other covers is because of either some contractual arrangement between her and Del Arroz or because she requested it. This review will therefore treat Del Arroz as the sole author for the purposes of offering praise or criticism. If Greyland is recognized as a co-author or ghostwriter down the line, then treat everything that follows as being directed at her and Del Arroz in equal measure (since, much like with Weis and Hickman, I don’t have the necessary information to separate the contributions of the individual authors).

STATS

Title: The Demon’s Eye

Series:N/A

Author(s): Jon Del Arroz

Genre: Fantasy (Sword & Sorcery, Christian Literature)

First Printing: October 2024 (Paperback), March 2025 (Kindle Edition)

Publisher: Self-published via Rislandia Books

SPOILER WARNING

Mild, unmarked spoilers for the entirety of The Demon’s Eye will be provided throughout this review. The first paragraph of any given section will be kept spoiler-free. Any heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.

STRUCTURE

Today, we’ll be covering the following:

• Premise

• Rating

• Themes

• Worldbuilding

• Plot

• Characters

• Prose / Editing

PREMISE

The Amazon product page for the Kindle edition provides us with the following:

A great evil has awakened.

War ravages the kingdoms of Hyrum and Tyril, strange apparitions are appearing everywhere, but the worst part of it all is Jayden finds himself at the center of an ancient prophecy.

He once fought for the evil Sorcerer King of Hyrum, but Jayden defected and renounced violence. His new life as a traveling bard makes him best suited to find the Harp of the Ancients and play their songs which will stave off Armageddon. But can he find the relic and learn their writ before the entire world is torn asunder?

This is followed by a marketing fluff line.

Fans of Conan the Barbarian, The Chronicles of Amber, and Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade will love The Demon’s Eye prose novel. Read today!

Reaction

In concept, this premise is right on the money. What’s on the page was clearly intended to tell this exact story. Nothing is exaggerated or misrepresented. I would like to point out that the name “Harp of the Ancients” is never actually used in the book, with the phrase “harp of the ancients” being used exactly once, but that is very much a nitpick.

However, this is another case of a good concept falling flat in execution. It doesn’t outright fail. It’s just that the payoffs Del Arroz promises don’t have any weight to them.

RATING: 4/10

This book is a perfect example of why I got so burned out by the indie market. It is one of the better examples of what gets self-published, but it is rough.

I’ve often commented on past books that they needed to be redrafted for one reason or another. Usually, this has to do with elements that don’t fit together, feel tacked on, or create outright contradictions. The suggestion that they need to be redrafted comes down to the idea that, if the author and the publishing house’s editor had reread the book and really thought about what was on the page, they could have make changes to correct these problems with relatively little effort.

The Demon’s Eye is a very different beast. What’s on the page is a perfectly functional narrative. While there certainly are contradictions, these are minor things that are annoying rather than damaging. In many respects, it’s no different from Eisenhorn or War of Souls. The reader experience may be highly subjective, but once one peels back the layers, the story runs just fine. Any person could summarize what’s on the page, and it would sound very satisfying.

Rather, the roughness here comes from a pervasive sense that Del Arroz filled scenes with placeholder lines, the sort that an author might jot down just to push through writer’s block and then go back later to reconfigure into something more impactful, and then never got around to the reconfiguring. Everything ends up feeling diminished as a result. Characterization is flattened, themes feel forced, payoffs feel unearned, and tension evaporates. This isn’t an immersive and engaging experience that allows the audience to forget that they’re reading a story. It’s just story being told to us.

It feels like Del Arroz was on the cusp of something fantastic at so many points, if only he’d rewritten some lines of dialogue or reframed a few scenes to make the themes feel more natural. He didn’t make those rewrites, though. As a result, a story that could have easily have landed in the 6 to 8 range in terms of score instead ends up reading like Son of the Storm.

THEMES

Christian Literature

It’s a bit weird that I wouldn’t categorize a book from the very Christian Narnia series as Christian Literature but would assign that label to a self-proclaimed Sword & Sorcery adventure. However, this does reflect the Amazon classification. Given what’s on the page and the fact that Del Arroz is not shy about speaking openly about faith matters on his YouTube channel, I don’t think he’d object.

An aspect of Jayden’s journey is the fact that he and his companions are, in a very literal sense, on a mission from God. The supernatural evils they confront are repelled by the name of Jesus Christ. While the word “Christian” does not appear anywhere in the text, Jayden starts the book unbaptized, is baptized before the halfway point, and finds himself dealing with temptations that he himself acknowledges to be pulling him away from God. There’s a very clear thematic idea that God will prevail over evil and that those who follow God will prevail with Him.

(There is an explanation for how this fantasy work has literal Christians in it, versus some Crystal Dragon Jesus religion. We’ll get to that in a moment.)

A story about an adventurer being chosen by God and finding faith through a quest could be compelling. I could see how the precise order of events Del Arroz puts on the page could deliver that story. Jayden’s initial reasons for pursuing faith even make sense for his background: he sees signs and wonders, realizes that he’s in over his head and that God is his best hope for survival, and grows to truly embrace the faith as pragmatism gives way to devotion.

Unfortunately, this is one of the places where the roughness of the story does a lot of damage. The theme feels heavy-handed and unearned. It reminds me of the handling of classism in Notorious Sorcerer: there’s plenty of talking about the ideas at play, but no meaningful exploration. We don’t gain any understanding or appreciation of these things. As a result, it feels less like Jayden has undergone a meaningful journey and more like he just shrugged and accepted the theme to be correct without much resistance or reflection. Any time it’s suggested that he’s undergoing a spiritual trial, it feels empty. Perhaps worst of all, because the theme doesn’t feel earned, the fact Jayden and his companions are following a path laid before them by God telegraphs the ending. The story had to end a specific way to avoid promoting an anti-theme.

Violence versus Pacifism

Early in the story, it’s established the Jayden is a former soldier of the kingdom of Hyrum who is seeking a more peaceful life as a musician. We learn in Chapter 3 that he is actually a deserter who left his unit due to the cruelty inflicted upon civilians during a war with the kingdom of Tyril. Throughout the book, we are reminded of Jayden’s desire for a peaceful life. Many (but not all) of the times that he picks up (or chooses to drop) a weapon, it is framed as a meaningful decision, either to choose peace or to engage in justified violence. In the final battle, Jayden’s decision to not draw a sword is framed as a turning point in the fight against evil.

This idea is reinforced so many times that it feels like more than a character arc. It seems like we’re supposed to be learning some lesson from this. However, it really doesn’t work as either an arc or a thematic statement. There’s no clear rhyme or reason to when violence is or isn’t the right call. Jayden just has a lot of angst about needing to use violence. Not even his decision in the final battle makes any sense. The fight ends almost immediately after he decides not to grab a sword - so quickly, in fact, that I’m not sure he’d have contributed anything even if he had grabbed the sword. The theme was ultimately meaningless to the fight.

WORLDBULDING

Science Fiction Salt

While this is a Sword & Sorcery adventure set in a pseudo-medieval world, there are some light science fiction elements at play. These don’t directly influence the plot, but they are important to understand exactly how this world works.

The world of The Demons Eye is a planet terraformed thousands of years ago by human colonists, specifically a group of Christians. We actually get very direct lore about this in Chapter 5.

“When the ancients came to this world, what did they do?” Hardwick asked.

“They created the air and the seas in their first month, and then in their second, they brought the trees and plants. In the third month, they populated all the animals and the fish in the seas. Then, they set down in the Freelands and rested to enjoy the fruits of their labors, and there, the seeds of the Church Vigilant began,” Jayden said.

“Very good,” Hardwick said. “And what of the evil one?”

Savrin dropped back his mug of beer, leaving a frothy foam on his lips afterward. “The ancients sought a new Jerusalem, as per the Holy Bible’s prophecy, but they could not remove sin from their flesh and bones. They thought in their hubris they would create a new heavenly kingdom, but instead retained the problems of the original fallen world. They brought with them a great evil, unleashing it upon the realm, and it brought about a hundred years of toil and torture before the ancient ones devised a way to imprison the Great Corrupter.”

Hardwick nodded. “And where was the Corrupter imprisoned?”

“In The Demon’s Eye Lake,” Jayden said.

This is an explanation that tidily resolves why this world that is clearly not Earth has Christianity. I think this is an elegant solution. At the same time, though, it does open another problem: what are we suppose to interpret as mystical versus sufficiently advanced technology?

This is a setting with dragons, sea serpents, Merfolk, “Lizard people”, banshees, ghosts, reanimated skeletons, and various spirits. Were these beings engineered by the colonists? It’s implied that at least the sea serpent was, but at least one ghost is explicitly identified as the soul of someone who died long after the colony collapsed and much of the technology was lost. There’s also the issue that some of these entities are affected by Christ’s name while others aren’t, and it doesn’t seem like this is at all linked to their potential origins.

We also have to consider the magic. The various feats that Jayden and his team accomplish is attributed to the power of prayer or blessing from God. Fair enough. However, where does the Sorcerer King get his powers from? There’s a point where a force field he conjured is described as “a pink pattern of hexagons”, playing into a Science Fiction aesthetic, but we never see any sign that he was using any equipment, and his powers are attributed to the Corruptor. Then there’s the Harp. The only thing about it that’s ever indicated to be special is that the Ancients made it, yet this precise instrument needs to be used to defeat the Corruptor, so is it some advanced technology specifically designed to deal with this demonic force, or is it some holy relic?

This confusion muddles the themes. Are we meant to think that God is on Jayden’s side because of tangible blessings God sends his way, or is it purely about the ontological goodness of his cause? Either option would be fine, but doing both muddles the story. What are we supposed to take from this?

Getting Lost

There are a lot of elements in this world that don’t make a lot of sense. These aren’t contradictions that open gaping plot holes, but they do make the world feel a lot less immersive.

Geography

I don’t see maps as an essential inclusion for Fantasy books, but this one sorely needed one.

We quickly learn about the following places:

• Hyrum

• Tyril, who are enemies of Hyrum

• The Freelands, which are north of Tyril, and seem to be most easily reached by sea.

• The Holy City, seat of the Church Vigilant, which is between Hyrum and Tyril but independent of them both

All this is fine. However, to complete the quest, Jayden and his party must travel from Tyril to the Freelands. They choose to do so by renting a cart and traveling overland, crossing a wasteland known as the Deadlands. It is implied that they don’t go through Hyrum to get from Tyril to the Deadlands.

Why, then, does Chapter 10 feature a group of soldiers from Hyrum in the Freelands, who are camped out on the road Jayden and the party are using and were specifically waiting for them? I’m fine with the idea that they got ahead of the party, since the party took a detour in Chapter 7 that would have allowed these soldiers to get past them, but with everything that has been explained to us, these soldiers would still need to pass through Tyril. How and why are they able to do this?

Religion

The inclusion of Christianity in this setting makes sense, the wider religious landscape does not.

At the start of the story, Jayden has almost no exposure to Christianity, while Savrin is employed by a man working with the Church Vigilant but seems to have a very transactional relationship to the faith himself. It’s implied that this world is either largely secular or follows some other, unspecified religion.

However, in the Epilogue, we’re then told that there are cathedrals in Hyrum. Are these cathedrals for the Church Vigilant? Is there another denomination? If any form of Christianity is widespread in this world, why is it presented to something utterly alien to Jayden when Savrin first mentioned the Church Vigilant?

Language

It seems like everyone in this setting speaks “the common King’s language”, or at least that every settlement has at least a few people who speak it. Jayden and his companions don’t encounter any communications barriers at any point, even when attacked by Lizards or Merfolk. This makes sense in terms of simplifying things for the audience, but it begs the question of why there are only the three languages overall. I can’t recall a single time that a human culture is shown speaking anything but this common language, no matter how far Jayden and the party travel. Why do none of the human cultures have their own languages after thousands of years of development after the colony collapsed?

PLOT

Much like The Stardust Thief, the novel is a series of small adventures organized under a single framing device, with each adventure bringing the heroes a few steps closer to their goal. The difference is that, while the adventures in the Stardust Thief are all essential pieces of the narrative, the adventures in The Demon’s Eye are so self-contained and so low-impact that the chapters in the back half of the book became tedious.

There are a total of sixteen chapters in The Demon’s Eye:

• Chapters 1 through 12

• Interludes 1 thorough 3

• The Epilogue

Each of the numbered chapters is its own adventure, with Chapter 1 doubling as the introduction to the story, while Chapter 12 is the final battle against the Corruptor. The interludes and epilogue cover scenes that move the story forward but are not part of any adventure.

The chapter undergoes the same cycle, with only minor variations.

• Jayden and whomever is in his party either travel to or arrive at a new location.

• An enemy appears. This is usually a one-off enemy, though the Sorcerer King does serve as a recurring foe across three chapters.

• The party defeats that threat. This typically comes down to either “and then they fight” action or some Deus ex Machina.

• In most cases, the party is then rewarded with either a new party member or a plot coupon.

The cycle isn’t obvious in the first half of the book. However, once the journey to confront the Corruptor properly kicks off, the cycle becomes really hard to ignore, and thus really hard to stay invested. I started to skim through the action portions of each chapter. There wasn’t a meaningful sense of stakes or tension once it became clear that Del Arroz wasn’t going to kill Jayden or anyone else in the group. The only reason I can’t say that whole chapters could be cut outright is that those party members and plot coupons would need to be explained somehow, and even then, it feels like those elements were tossed in as an afterthought precisely behind the chapters were extraneous.

And, yes, for those who read last week’s Onyx Storm review post: this is almost identical to cycle we touched upon in the Power Fantasy Spotlight and will explore once the rainbow dragon hunt properly begins. The only significant difference is length and motivation. The Demon’s Eye compresses each iteration of the cycle, and unlike Onyx Storm, the cycles aren’t driven by power fantasy. Instead, it reads as though Del Arroz wanted to write a short story anthology before changing his mind and clumsily reconfiguring it into a novel.

CHARACTERS

Much like the Eisenhorn books, we have a case where characters have almost nothing to them beyond their functional roles in the plot.

• Jayden is a former soldier-turned bard who ends up being the Chosen One.

• Savrin is the party rogue, who recruits Jayden for the Chapter 1 adventure. He also serves as an attempt as comic relief.

• Bronwyn is a princess and apparent White Mage character who joins the pair after they rescue her from the Sorcerer King. She becomes Jayden’s love interest.

• Menek is a monk with the Church Vigilant who ends up filling a cleric role. He joins the party because … I’m actually not sure why. There’s a scene where the Sorcerer King comes to retake Bronwyn and arrest Jayden, and he decides to arrest Savrin while he’s there, but then Menek gets dragged along and thrown into the prison cart for no clear reason.

• Floryn the Mer-King joins the group after being impressed by Jayden’s and Savrin’s skills.

As we discussed with the Themes, Del Arroz plays with two potential character arcs for Jayden, but neither has enough substance to feel like meaningful character development.

There’s also a Romance subplot between Jayden and Bronwyn that’s very bland and paint-by-numbers. I could see what Del Arroz was going for, but it just didn’t have any emotional weight. The one vaguely positive thing I could say about this element is the handling of sexual references, and that positive is only relative to The Empyrean: namely, it’s a good example how awkward sexual observations and comments are less gross when they aren’t layered on top of pornography. (Don’t get me wrong, these bits are still incredibly painful to read.)

I wish I could say more about this aspect of the story, but the characters are so simplistic that there’s noting else to really pick apart. Again, if this were an anthology of short stories, I could understand this to an extent. It’s just very unsatisfying for a novel.

PROSE / EDITING

I don’t think Del Arroz hired an editor to look at his book. If he did, his editor should have reread the text a couple more times before sending him notes.

There are quite a few typos in this book. They’re not so dense that they destroy the reading experience, but they do stand out: missing words, punctuation and capitalization errors, etc. Frankly, these are all mistakes I make on this blog all the time. I just wish that someone publishing a Kindle e-book would take time to comb these things out.

There’s also a lot of repeated information. A fact established early in a chapter will be reiterated later for no apparent reason. Chapter 11 has a scene where a single small boat is destroyed at least twice. Some of these repeats could be justified with small edits - even the boat thing seems like poor word choice rather than Del Arroz forgetting he’d destroyed the boat already. However, Del Arroz didn’t make these edits, so the repeated information comes across as being very clumsy.

CONCLUSION

A common adage I see in the online writing community is that writers should focus on writing the stories that they would want to see on shelves, rather than worrying about chasing trends. I do think that is what Del Arroz tried to do here. Rather than simply complaining about the current state of Fantasy and Science Fiction, he wrote a story to fill the demand of himself and people who share his frustrations. I’d say he succeeded in that respect.

However, that does not, in and of itself, make The Demon’s Eye a good book.

This isn’t a book that is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t cannibalize itself. Expectations weren’t established and then tossed aside. As for the themes, while they narrow the possible endings, they at least weren’t actively at war with the story as a whole.

What was missing here was the time and effort to properly polish this book into something great. Del Arroz is self-published, so he’s not beholden to the deadlines of a traditional publisher. I have to assume that either he wasn’t fully invested in this project or that this book reflects the limits of his writing skills. That’s a shame. I don’t think this book needs to be fundamentally reworked to fix it, just fine-tuned.

I do still plan to review more indie books in the future. I’m just not certain whether another Del Arroz book will be among them. As a re-introduction to the indie market, this simply was not a good start.

PREPARE FOR BATTLE

Next week, we’ll return to Onyx Storm for Chapters 9 through 11. These chapters feature the best action scene in the entire series thus far, a genuinely harrowing sequence of dragon-on-wyvern combat. They also introduce an element that, as we’ll get to when we discuss Chapter 12, undermines the entire trajectory of the series.

Then, on May 30th, we will be doing another indie title, this one by my favorite indie author. Lindsay Buroker has not stopped cranking out books in the years since I stepped away from the indie market. In the interest of seeing what she’s up to now, I’ve picked up her latest series, a Urban Fantasy werewolf story called Magnetic Magic. I hope you’ll join me in two weeks for the review of the first book in the series, Way of the Wolf.

Thank you all for joining me this week. Please remember to subscribe for the newsletter if you’d like to receive weekly e-mails with the latest post links. Until next time, I hope you all take care and have a great weekend.