Devil's Kiss (Devil's Kiss Series #1)

by Sarwat Chadda

Overview

As the youngest and only female member of the Knights Templar, Bilquis SanGreal grew up knowing she wasn't normal. Instead of hanging out at the mall or going on dates, she spends her time training as a soldier in her order's ancient battle against the Unholy. Billi's cloistered life is blasted apart when her childhood friend, Kay, returns from Jerusalem, gorgeous and with a dangerous chip on his shoulder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423135821
Publisher:	Disney Press
Publication date:	09/02/2009
Series:	Devil's Kiss Series , #1
Sold by:	DISNEY PUBLISHING WORLDWIDE -EBKS
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	395,888
File size:	372 KB
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Sarwat Chadda was brought up a Muslim but is married to a minister’s daughter. He says his ‘home life curiously reflects the ongoing conflict between Islam and Christianity, especially when it comes to whose turn it is to do the dishes.’ He was brought up on stories of Saladin, Richard the Lion-heart and the Crusades, viewed from both sides, and cut his authorial teeth writing his own role-playing scenarios. He is an engineer who has worked on some of the biggest projects in the world, but now lives in London with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Chadda's fast-paced debut introduces 15-year-old Billi SanGreal, who is drafted into the modern remnants of the once-great Knights Templar by her fanatical, emotionally distant father, leader of the order (“How was school?” he asks while she's still “covered in slimy gore” after an exorcism). Though skilled in weaponry and educated in obscure religious history, Billi is a poor fit for the Templars: the lone girl in an otherwise all-male organization, of Muslim extraction but surrounded by Christians and lacking the unblinking ruthlessness required by the eternal war between the Knights and the forces of darkness. Nonetheless, she finds herself standing between the Angel of Death, Michael, who has become blinded by imagined glories of enforced salvation, and the multitude of innocents Michael would happily slaughter in the name of God. Scenes of spiritual warfare are gripping (and often gruesome), as is the undercurrent of supernatural romance. Chadda offers an original take on familiar creatures like vampires, the undead and fallen angels, but it's Billi's personality and tumult of emotions that will keep readers hooked. A promising beginning to both this series and Chadda's career. Ages 13–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

While the title and cover art seem calculated to attract fantasy romance fans, this debut novel is, at its heart, a quest story whose heroine lives in modern London. A member of the Knights Templar, an ancient order fighting evil, fifteen-year-old Billi SanGreal has been training for the last five years. Under the leadership of her distant father (her mother was murdered), Billi and the other knights fight an assortment of ghuls, vampire-like demons who serve the mysterious Angel of Death. Billi has just joined the Knights Templar officially when her friend Kay, an Oracle who reads minds, returns from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Predictable sexual tension ensues, driving the outcast Billi to try to carve out a little normalcy in her life by dating a mysterious boy named Mike. Mike, covered in thorn tattoos, urges Billi to rebel against her father. The actual quest happens late in the book, and the plot is fairly predictable though the final battle satisfyingly ties up all the loose ends. The violence and the depiction of a plague are graphic, and there is limited profanity. Overall, readers of supernatural fiction will find this novel enjoyable. Reviewer: Kristina Cassidy

Children's Literature - Kristina Cassidy

Gr 9 Up—Sarwat Chadda's fast-paced novel (Hyperion, 2009) combines modern London with a fantasy world of ghuls (vampire/ghoul), weres, the Grigori (fallen angels), the Knights Templar, Arthurian characters, and a dash of Harry Potter. Thanks to a prophesy, Bilquis (Billi) SanGreal is the only female member of the Knights Templar. Since she is also the youngest, she tries to combine school with a rigorous training and patrolling schedule which she resents. This makes her easy prey for the attention of Mike, a handsome and mysterious young man who appears to understand her better than anyone else. But Mike isn't what he appears. He's the Archangel Michael on a quest to bring forth his watcher brothers and sisters, trapped in the ether by Solomon's mirror—protected through the ages by the Templars. Filled with Biblical lore, magical words and symbols, and medieval history, the novel takes listeners on a roller-coaster ride, leading to a tumultuous denouement. Anna Flosnik does an excellent job of voicing all the characters. A highly recommended listen.—Suanne Roush, Osceola High School, Seminole, FL

School Library Journal

Forget the jacket blurb's come-on to paranormal-romance fans, this is an old-fashioned high-octane horror tale, dripping with ghastly portents, eldritch violence and an embittered heroine facing down the looming Apocalypse. Billi SanGreal has been training since childhood to fight alongside the remnants of the Knights Templar, the mysterious medieval order founded to oppose the dark powers. Now dwindled to a handful of battle-scarred men, none is more grim and cold than their master, her father. Billi takes comfort in her friendship with the young psychic Kay, but when he carelessly invokes a long-dormant evil, she must confront a force more powerful, more monstrous, more tempting than anything she could imagine. The glorious splendor of the Templar mythos is deftly contrasted with the squalid dreariness of their present, illuminating the refuge they find in the cleaner, simpler problems of ghouls and werewolves and the fleeting beauty of innocence they so brutally defend. But Billi, in her anger-from simmering to white-hot-and her pain-physical, emotional and spiritual-dominates the story with gritty, fierce humanity. Love, loss, betrayal and sacrifice, leavened only with the bittersweet grace of doing what must be done. Deus vult! (Horror. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews