A Review of Demons, by John Shirley
Demons by John Shirley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Why don’t more people talk about this strange book? What sets out to be a bizarre, PKD style satire of altered realities spins out into a suspenseful, truly horrifying morality tale full of incredibly creepy visions rendered in deliciously precise language. You’ve got to admire what this book achieves in its brevity, especially in the days of obligatory door-stop genre novels. I had a hard time putting it down, but it clearly pushed some subconscious buttons, giving me nightmares for a while, so I had to reluctantly stop reading it for a week. Given Shirley’s note in the beginning, there is a bit of uncanny prophesy about it all. My only disappointment was in some of the received gender notions and the cliched use of a sinister female sexuality– the femme fatale, etc. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading others by Shirley.
