The Demon Trapper's Daughter

Gr 9 Up—The year is 2018, and Riley is no ordinary Atlanta teen. She is training to be a demon trapper like her father. The economy has gone to hell, and so it makes perfect sense that hell would send forth demons to wreak havoc on Earth. The opening scene has Riley trapping a lower level Biblio-fiend that lives in a university library and storing him in a sippy cup until turning him in. This sounds like it is a tongue-in-cheek novel, but it is not. Riley's father is killed by demons, and there is some mysterious link to Riley, placing her life in danger. Her father's hot bad-boy former apprentice, Beck, has a crush on Riley, as does the kinder, wholesome, and religious trapper Simon, creating the romantic angle. There is a mystery involving the potency of the Holy Water used to fight demons and treat the wounds they inflict, and the fact that demons seem to know Riley's name. Another intriguing subplot is how the rich can have dead people reanimated to be their slaves for a year after death, and families must sit vigil over the graves of loved ones to keep this from happening. Catholic dogma permeates this book and will either offend or entrance practitioners. While the various twists and subplots seem ridiculous at times, on the whole this first in a series is engrossing.—Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO