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 Daemonic by Stephen Laws
reviewed by ??
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, date?
I should know better. Daemonic has a cover which appealed to me on some level I cannot explain or access with my rational mind. I liked it immediately. I wanted it. To have. To hold. To possess. Sick, huh? Then I flipped it over and read the blurb. Always a mistake, unless you have all your wits about you. The guys who write the back cover stuff are not paid for their ability to accurately portray the worth of the book. They are paid to hook you, by whatever means possible. Either fair or foul. Bastards. They got me again, even though the villain of the piece had a stupid name like Jack Draegerman. I should have listened to that tiny voice somewhere in the far back of my mind that protested, 'Nothing with a character named Draegerman can be anything but crap.' But I didn't listen. I shut him up and, despite an odd feeling of unease (which has nothing to do with the fact that it is a horror novel), set about the task of wading into it.
First chapter: brilliant. Grabs you by the scruff of the neck and demands you read faster. Keep turning those pages. Second chapter. Good, but too like the first chapter. Third chapter: uh-oh. Somebody (Draegerman's heavies) is gathering a bunch of people together for some inexplicable reason. Mostly they go like lambs (to the slaughter, we know, inevitably). Each of those gathered is introduced. We see their background, their failings, get a flavour of their lives, and get a chance to sympathise with (some of) them. Already, before the collecting is even finished, you can begin to list them in order of death and cut out the eventual survivors from the herd. It's that type of novel. It could be nothing else.
Then we meet Draegerman's rock. Stupid name for a building. It's part office block part gothic castle, all fortress. And it's one of the main characters in the book.
Hold it. Hold it right there. Haven't we passed this way sometime before? A novel called Darkfall? By one Stephen Laws? People gathered into a building. An office block tower, all glass and concrete and malevolence. Who will live, who will die? The building as the main antagonist. Hasn't this been done, and by the same author?
Count the questions. Supply the same number of yesses. Apart from the cosmetic differences - different characters, different reason for the building becoming semi-sentient - this is merely Darkfall revisited. Maybe it's a little better, maybe it's not. It's hard to really give a shit. Daemonic is a little longer - make that a good deal longer - and therefore a little more detailed. But it also drags a bit. A good bit. Too many times I found myself skipping sections where I just knew what had to happen and really I just wanted to get to the next bit that moved the plot along.
All in all Daemonic is little more than adequate hackwork with little originality. There are too many places where the pace falls off, too many places where you can stop and see the cracks Laws has tried to paper over. Too many times when you ask yourself where you saw this all before; which bit of what novel this is and is it any better than the original. Much as I wanted to like this book I found it impossible. The cover is still good though and I'd really love a print of it. If Jon Blake, the artist responsible, ever gets to see this, drop me a line and let me know if it's possible to get hold of commercially.
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