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The Devil's Only Friend

 The Devil's Only Friend
type
TVTItem
 The Devil's Only Friend
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The Devil's Only Friend
 The Devil's Only Friend
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TheDevilsOnlyFriend
 The Devil's Only Friend
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The first in a new trilogy about John Wayne Cleaver, this novel picks up about a year after the conclusion of the previous book.As indicated by the ending of that book, John and Brooke have joined an FBI team dedicated to hunting out and killing the supernatural monsters known as The Withered. Unfortunately, Brooke's experience as the host of Nobody, while giving her insider knowledge about the Withered (including their proper name), has also made her mentally unstable and often incapable of differentiating between the memories of hundreds of past lives from Nobody and her own day to day existence.John, meanwhile, is chafing under the restrictions of working with a team and never being permitted to deal the final blow when they finally flush out the Withered. He's reinstated some of his 'rules' to prevent himself from completely losing it, but his violent urges and problems with connecting to other people remain, and he frequently fantasizes about killing his teammates. Their teammates mostly dislike or are disturbed by him, and find Brooke a useful tool at best and a scary crazy chick at worst. Things are not exactly going great, and that's even before they begin to realize that the Withered have taken notice of their actions and may be preparing to strike back...
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2024-04-20T14:31:58Z
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2024-04-20T14:31:58Z
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DBTropes
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_11f5ef55
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Many Spirits Inside of One
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_11f5ef55
comment
Many Spirits Inside of One: Brooke's Split Personality is close to this, with at least thirty known different personalities.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_1439161f
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Heroic BSoD
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_1439161f
comment
Heroic BSoD: John slips into one after killing Agarin, partially because he's never lost control so badly before and partially because she's his third kill, and he knows what that means in criminology. Once is murder, twice is a coincidence, three times is a serial killer. He took a shower, curled up on a chair, and stared at the wall for thirteen hours.
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Darker and Edgier
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_14beeefd
comment
Darker and Edgier: Than the first trilogy, which is saying something. The language is a bit rougher, it's tonally more serious, having abandoned the high school setting and the adolescent drama that surrounded it, and there's more open acknowledgement of sexuality. Usually in a bad way.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_22f6000b
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Everybody's Dead, Dave
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_22f6000b
comment
Everybody's Dead, Dave: After the strike team tries to take on Rack, John and Elijah are the only survivors. Then by the end of the book, the rest of the FBI team is decimated, the antagonist is dead, and John and Brooke are the only ones to have survived the events of the book.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_261bfbfc
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Pummeling the Corpse
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_261bfbfc
comment
John after realizing that Potash was conscious and watching while he lost control and started Pummeling the Corpse.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_26eb6287
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Funny Background Event
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_26eb6287
comment
Funny Background Event: Brooke taking her anger out on everything available with a wrench while Nathan and John discuss their dead teammates.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_2e154495
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Shower of Angst
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_2e154495
comment
Shower of Angst: John takes one after killing Mary Gardner, and another after the final confrontation with Rack and Nathan.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_3a153596
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Dead Guy Puppet
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_3a153596
comment
Dead Guy Puppet: Having no mouth and no heart, Rack is only able to communicate through dead bodies' mouths, taking their heart in the process. John uses it to his advantage by using Nathan's corpse and embalming his body with gasoline, resulting in Rack dying poisoned after taking Nathan's heart.
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BlackAndGreyMorality
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Black-and-Grey Morality: Parasitic supernatural creatures vs. criminals with varying intentions.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_5a3b8032
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The Un-Reveal
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_5a3b8032
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The Unreveal: We never find out anything concrete about Potash's past. We also don't know what made Kelly Ishida end up on the team.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_5fcb9ad1
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Time Skip
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_5fcb9ad1
comment
Time Skip: The book takes place almost a year after the events of I Don't Want To Kill You, with John having joined the team sometime between both books, and solved at least two cases in the meantime.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_61996785
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Sacrificial Lamb
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_61996785
comment
Sacrificial Lamb: Kelly Ishida.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_676e942c
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We Hardly Knew Ye
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comment
We Hardly Knew Ye: The first death of a team member (Kelly) may come off as this.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_6d89ad1a
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The Ophelia
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_6d89ad1a
comment
The Ophelia: Holding thousands of years of Withered memory has done a number on Brooke's sanity.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_78270847
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Curse Cut Short
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_78270847
comment
Curse Cut Short: A rare case of the curser cutting himself off. Sharing space with people....stresses John out. Especially when those people want to bring nice, red, choppable meat into his apartment.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_794095d7
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Boxed Crook
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_794095d7
comment
Boxed Crook: Many members of the strike team are guilty of various crimes, from gangbanging to actual war crimes.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_80a282ea
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Monster Lord
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_80a282ea
comment
Monster Lord: Rack, the main antagonist of this book, is referred to as the kingnote It is even revealed that Rack is so old and so influential that his name is the source from which the word "king" and other titles derives in Indo-European languages of the Withered, and it is explained that he was the one that "came up" with the plan of gaining eternal life by giving something in exchange and turning into Withered.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_813e694d
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Continuity Cavalcade
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comment
Continuity Cavalcade: Rack's dossier on John fills new readers in on his past exploits.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_96fbeaf
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There Are No Therapists
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_96fbeaf
comment
There Are No Therapists: There is one, Dr. Trujillo, the team's psychologist, but John doesn't like him in part because of how he treats Brooke.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_9b3c14cb
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Van Helsing Hate Crimes
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_9b3c14cb
comment
Van Helsing Hate Crimes: By the end of the book, John fears he's been committing these with his black-and-white "humans good, demons bad" morality.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_a8c7bf13
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Sickbed Slaying
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_a8c7bf13
comment
Sickbed Slaying: Mary Gardner, the Disc-One Final Boss, is an angel of death Serial Killer, using her job as a nurse to hide her kills. She takes it one step farther than the usual — she's a pediatric nurse. She's an unusual case in that her shtick both covers her ass and makes her more vulnerable. She can pass on any illness she gets, making a hospital a great place to inconspicuously kill, but also is possessed of an incredibly weak immune system, so her "work" makes her sick all the time.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_ad1db87c
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Oh, Crap!
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_ad1db87c
comment
Oh, Crap!: Several. John after realizing that Potash was conscious and watching while he lost control and started Pummeling the Corpse. The strike team as a whole when they reach Rack's house and realize exactly how deep the shit they're in is. Rack himself, as he realizes what John has done to Nathan's body.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_ad3d8092
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Heartbroken Badass
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_ad3d8092
comment
Heartbroken Badass: John is effectively in mourning throughout the book. The climax revolves around his having to accept and deal with the pain instead of pushing it away or numbing it like he always does.
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Sixth Ranger Traitor
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_b454d74b
comment
Sixth Ranger Traitor: John himself, in a way. He is on the fringes of the group, a recent and distrusted acquisition, and actively plots to escape and/or murder his teammates. You know. If necessary. Nathan Gentry is the newest member of the team at the beginning of the book, and he is the one who betrayed them for Rack's promises of fortune.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_b72923df
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The Final Temptation
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_b72923df
comment
The Final Temptation: A variation in the climax. Rack offers to demonize John and suggests that his sacrifice for it should be to give up his pain. It's hardly the typical vision of contentment and tranquility, but John is hardly the typical vision of a hero. He would be free of the heartbreak over Marci and his mother, free of the struggle to be good and the confusion about what good even is that's hitting him hard, at the low, low cost of becoming what he has spent years trying not to be: a selfish, violent, unfeeling monster. He even calls rejecting it "giving up on peace".
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_c8ba12ee
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Interplay of Sex and Violence
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_c8ba12ee
comment
Interplay of Sex and Violence: More obvious than ever, with John's frustration over planning the murders, but getting no "release" making it all too easy to ask Does This Remind You of Anything?
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_d39e327f
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What the Hell, Hero?
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_d39e327f
comment
What the Hell, Hero?: When Rack sends the team a letter detailing each member's Dark and Troubled Past, this is the reaction all of them get from the others. Most notably is the collective disgust to Ostler and Trujillo's pasts: one illegally sold guns to Mexican cartels and the other served out a sentence for statutory rape.
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 The Devil's Only Friend / int_d6d26e96
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Just a Kid
 The Devil's Only Friend / int_d6d26e96
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Just a Kid / Tagalong Kid: John, much to his displeasure. Prodigy he may be, but the FBI team mostly sees him as a mouthy teenager.
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Dark and Troubled Past
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Dark and Troubled Past: Every member of the team has one, being the reason they enlisted or were forced to join the team in the first place. It is redacted from their personal dossiers, which Rack manages to get his hands on during the course of the book and reveals to the team every member's dirty secrets, save for Potash who even he could apparently not find anything on.
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Pet the Dog
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Pet the Dog: Every time John visits Brooke in the hospital. He also adopts a dog, and it's still alive at the end of the book. It seems somewhat taken with him.
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The Devil's Only Friend

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 The Devil's Only Friend
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