Book Review - Demogorgon (Brian Lumley)

(This review contains spoilers)

Today I look at Brian Lumley's 1987 occult thriller Demogorgon. Charlie Trace is a cat burglar with no real future and a past he'd like to forget. One day he's approached by a mysterious Greek with disturbing news – Trace is the son of the Antichrist, who's now hunting for him. At first dismissive, Trace slowly realises that he's a tool in a plot to revive an ancient evil spawned from Satan himself.

I was drawn to Demogorgon by its author's name. I'd previously read Lumley's Necroscope, which showed his knack for fast-moving prose and plotting that whisks the reader along on an engrossing supernatural trip. Demogorgon doesn't quite reach its heights, but it's still a lot of fun for all that.

The characters are not especially deep but they're engaging enough. Trace starts off as a man who only looks out for number one, having been abandoned by his father and losing his mother to a nervous breakdown. Thieving gives his life purpose, not to mention experience in dodging the lords of the Underworld – the criminal one in this case. As horrific events start building around him, Trace becomes a more traditional, morally pure hero. He never really becomes an action hero though, spending much of the third act drugged up to his eyeballs – which I thought hampered the plot a fair bit. He also doesn't do much in the climax, leaving it up to the more interesting secondary characters to save the day.

I really wish Dimitrio Kastroumi had got his own novel. He has a backstory which really could have done with some fleshing out – he stabbed a man in a fit of romantic envy for marrying the woman he loved, but the impact of this on him (like guilt?) isn't really touched on. Plus he spends thirty years researching and tracking down the Antichrist. You could write a whole saga on that!

We're also teased with some social context. There's an establishing section of the story set in Cyprus in the 1950s, where emnity between the Greeks and the Turks is boiling over into violence and vigilantism. It's only here that we see the effect the Antichrist has on the wider world – the rest of the time, “Khumeni” (as he goes by here) is only interested in his own rejuvenation. Perhaps Lumley didn't feel there was time to expand beyond his main characters.

Lumley also tries to work in a love story between Trace and the mysterious Amira Halbstein. Unfortunately, like Trace, she also becomes less active in the plot as the story goes on. There's some brief tension as you wonder what side she's really on, but it quickly turns into a trite “falling for the mark” subplot. Her feelings for Trace are kind of out-of-the-blue (maybe that was just Trace's devilish charm working on her sub-consciously?).

Also Trace – when he realises she's working for Khumeni – orders her to strip for some reason. Because . . . fanservice?

Her role in Khumeni's plot doesn't make much sense either. She was sent to seduce Trace to make him come to Israel with her, where Khumeni would be lying in wait. But Khumeni sends some thugs with her to bring Trace by force if he proves troublesome. He eventually does and has to be doped to come along with them. So why didn't Khumeni just do that before? Wouldn't it have made more sense to keep Amira near him so he could keep an eye on her?

And jumping to the end, that coda felt a bit flat too. Trace, finally succumbing to his dark inner self, calls on Satan's power to destroy some thugs who beat him up, and his ex who went over to their side. The trouble is, none of these characters are developed enough so their deaths felt a bit off. I wasn't sure what I was meant to feel. Was there supposed to be some grim satisfaction to watching them get struck by lightning? If so, Lumley could have built up their unpleasantness a bit more.

The supernatural side of the book is handled better though, and it's clearly here that Lumley has the most interest, so I won't hold his character issues against him too much. The Antichrist's absorbtion of his victims is a wonderfully gruesome sight – and it also lets Lumley play on the old image of the devil as having goat legs. We also get walking lightning, a terrifying but awesome way to kill someone. Lumley plays with biblical stereotypes here as well – here it's Satan's wrath that comes from the sky as lightning, not God's.

The climax though feels a bit too neat. Khumeni is just about ready to be fully revived and then . . . Satan just abandons him? Why? He threw away his chance at world domination. Had he thought Khumeni had failed him in some way? Did the Prince of Darkness suddenly decide his grandson would make a better agent? Again, Lumley could have set this up better by showing Trace as more overtly villainous.

Khumeni is thus left the ignominous fate of being turned into a pig-man and falling off a cliff to his death. Kind of a shite way to treat your villain. It's not really a case of “God out of the machine” so much as “Satan exits stage left.”

Alas Demogorgon has many problems. But I still had fun.