Armageddon Bound (Book 1 of the Demon Squad series) by Tim Marquitz

Dark urban fantasy is a subgenre I’ve grown a taste for in recent years. Life in a packed city environment seems tailor made for stories mixing dark urges, tension, suspense, action, and the right amount of humor. Simon R. Green and Jim Butcher have both successfully mined this territory in their respective series (The Nightside series and the Dresden Files). Now Tim Marquitz has done the same, unleashing a fast, furious, and compelling story in the opening volume of his Demon Squad series.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding on display throughout, positing a world in which God and the Devil have both abandoned the Earth, leaving angels and demons and humanity to get on as best they can. Naturally, this results in scheming and plotting that brings the world to the brink of armageddon (hey, there’s a reason the book isn’t called “Puppies and Ice Cream Bound”…). It falls to Frank Trigg and his occult-wise, heavily-armed allies to somehow figure out how to derail it.

There is a lot of action in this book, and Marquitz does a very good job at keeping it clear and focused without lots of ‘telling.’ I also enjoyed the personality of Frank Trigg, who, while hardly an angel (part-demon, actually, and at times all-libido), has his limits, and knows when it’s time to take a stand against impossible odds. I expect I’ll very much enjoy the following books in the series.