My thoughts on Fiends In High Places by D.C Farmer

 Warning, spoilers throughout!

For my new year's resolution, I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to read at least one book a month with the help of the Kindle K (my partner) got me for Christmas, and a subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

After a bit of searching, I came across Fiends In High Places by D.C. Farmer.

Because it was a genre I enjoy reading, plus the fact it was on Kindle unlimited, it seemed like the perfect book to begin my new year's resolution with...boy how wrong I was!

The book can be summed up as, unhappy protagonist who gets bullied at work and has constant bad luck after getting into a car accident discovers that a world exists beyond our own, learns he has God like powers, saves the day from evil (despite his best attempt to sabotage it) gets revenge on his bullies, and of course, gets the girl.

The book's protagonist, Matt Danmor, is not a character I find enjoyable to be around for long periods of time. This is an issue as (apart from the prologue) we are forced to be by his side for the entire book. It would be different if he was meant to be unlikable, but unfortunately we are meant to root for him.

In between talking in constant, long winded metaphors and similes which quickly became tiresome, he can't help but talk about how attractive he thinks Kylah is every time she's brought up or appears in the book. This just ends up making it feel like she was there just to be drooled over rather than the fleshed out character. All this on top of what felt like a perpetual woe is me cycle from Matt just made him someone whose story I wasn't interesting in concluding, even after I'd discovered why all this was happening to him.

However, one of my biggest annoyances with his character came near the end of the book, when he'd been transported to a place where he was invisible to the main villains. Rather than taking advantage of the fact that he could sneak around completely unseen, he not only screws it up once and outs where he is (which ends with him literally dying) he does it again later just so he can have a rant about religion being a load of bollocks.

There were many times during the reading of this book that I was tempted to put it down and never go back to it again, but there was something about this moment that really rubbed me the wrong way, and made me seriously consider stopping once and for all.

If this rant had all been an inner monologue I wouldn't have had a second thought about it, since it made sense in the context of the scene. It was the fact that, despite our protagonist deciding to come back to life so he could try and save everyone (with the help of his new reality warping powers), and him being in a perfect position to save everyone without being caught because, as stated before, he's invisible, he couldn't help but voice his opinions out loud about how stupid he thinks religion is. This, to no one's surprise, ends with him getting caught...

All I could come up with was that the author had written themselves into a corner with the invisibility, and the only way out of it was to make Matt do the exact same idiotic thing not just once, but twice, with the second time being even more nonsensical.

If you really need a main character to go off on a religion is bad and dumb rant, don't do it at the worst moment possible because you couldn't figure out a better way to raise the stakes...

The only reason I carried on reading after that was because I was nearing the end of the book, and I didn't want the first book of my new year's resolution to end in a DNF (did not finish).

Moving on to the plot. Through much of the book I just kept wishing there had been more fantasy elements that didn't involve the never ending loop that was, weird thing happens to Matt, Matt thinks he's going mad, because it got boring fast. When Matt did start finding out the truth and it looked as though the main adventure was about to begin, it was quickly snatched away when he got Men in Blacked by Kylah. After that it was like going back to square one with his character.

When it was finally time to plunge into the main story and stick with it (sort of), it was so far into the book that there just wasn't time to drip feed lore, and so a ton of it was suddenly dumped in my lap. It ended up being far too much far too quickly and I had to try get my head around it all in a short space of time, which ended up with me getting confused at times with certain words and names of characters.

While it wouldn't have fixed the book for me, I feel like it would have helped to have had time away from Matt and learn more about Kylah. We could have gotten more information about her world and who she works for at a steadier, more easily digestible pace, while learning about her as a character. I get that the author might be saving that for the next book (and some background is given right near the end), but if I had the choice of spending more time with Kylah and her world, or with Matt the accident prone porter who gets a dildo superglued to his hand (yes that actually happens) I know where I'd rather spend my time...

There were other issues I had that I could get into, like veering away from the main plot for a third time to visit a place with shops that had names like Bloops the Alchemist and Dependablehams, or that we needed Rimsplitter the swearing (but not really swearing) vulture to cram in yet more exposition, but at this point I would like to be done writing about this book, so let's move to my overall thoughts.

My final score for Fiends In High Places is going to be two and half out of five. I was excited to learn more about who Kylah worked for, and delve into this new world, but we instead plodded around aimlessly for too long. Once I did get to the main plot it was too far into the book, wasn't overly satisfying, and felt as though the good stuff was being saved for a sequel. I didn't end up gelling with Matt, whose 'luck' is so overpowered that his only kryptonite currently appears to be his own stupidity, and the humour most of the time just didn't work for me.

My personal recommendations would be that, if you want funny quips with British humour, watch Blackadder. If you want a story based around being able to control luck to your advantage, give the Red Dwarf episode Quarantine a watch. And if you enjoy modern urban fantasy books with a sense of humour, give Rivers Of London a read.

However, all of this is just my opinion, and my opinion alone. The reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for this book are pretty positive overall, so maybe the writing style of this one just wasn't for me personally...

The question is, will I be reading any more of these books? As much as I didn't enjoy this book, I do plan to give the next one in the series a go at some point in the future, as I'm curious if it'll include all the things I wanted from this book. Fingers crossed the next one will be more my thing.

If you've read this book I'd be interested to know what you thought of it. Do you agree with any of my points, or do you think I'm completely wrong and it's one of the best books you've ever read, I'd love to know!