In progress review of "Firetale," past the half-way point.

Several new characters have been introduced, and vignettes spanning the more than 100 years of the circus make it a little difficult to remember who is who.  A few questions that were raised in the early part of the book are beginning to be answered, however, so that's nice.  We now understand why it is so important to Lucifer to have the circus as a safe place for his demionis.  During the inquisition, demionis were hunted down to near extinction, and the progeny of psychics were trained as Judges (who are really judge, jury, and executioner) who could track down and kill and demionis that showed itself to be dangerous to humans.

A Judge is now on the trail of Greg, our little firestarter.  The demon Astorath pointed the Judge in the direction of the circus.  Though Astorath was one of the first to follow Lucifer from heaven, he now wants to return to his home and thinks that if he shows God that Lucifer can't control his demon spawn, it will put him back into His good graces.  Of course, all this does is piss off his big brother and get him kicked out of Hell as well.  We now have the question, where does an angel live if it cannot live in Heaven, or in Hell?  The character of Astorath seems so sad and miserable that I can't see him surviving double exile all that well.  He's bound to do something stupid in short order.

A number of circus archivists (humans who travel with the circus, listing the various goings on and studying demionis and magic) have told stories from their times with the circus.  Some of the stories help the reader to understand the purpose of the circus, or to better understand the main characters.  Some of the stories, however, seem out of place in the overall arch of this book.  They're like unnecessary add-ons that should be a compilation of short stories to accompany the main novel.  Interspersed as they are with the main story, I wonder if they are more important to the arch than they appear.  Maybe the various demionis they introduce will come back into play later in the book.  However, at this point, they're more of a distraction than anything else.