Lone Star Press

Daryl Gregory’s first novel is a work of daring and brilliance. The prose is crisp and the observed world around him is well drawn. In the world of Pandemonium, demon possession is common enough to have various strains identified. A pistol-wielding demon named The Truth guns down liars. A shield-slinging hero nicknamed The Captain possesses soldiers in their darkest hours. And a puckish demon named The Hellion possesses little boys and has adventures that are a series of boyish pranks.

In the story, young Del is posessed by a demon when he is five and to his horror, the demon never leaves. Now, Del is in his twenties and the demon has re-awakened. The Hellion wants out so that he can spread his brand of mischief. Del wants him dead. As Del races to find a cure, The Hellion in his head starts throwing up roadblocks including a murder. Pandemonium is a clever and compelling read.

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Probably the least popular of Jack Kirby’s many creations, Devil Dinosaur is a bit of a punchline. The series deserves it. Make no mistake, these are some weak comics. They are goofy without being funny. If the introduction by Tom Brevoort is accurate, this series was created because there was a bit of interest in turning his Kamandi series from DC into a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Kirby wanted to create something like that for Marvel, so he went back in time instead of forward. It took courage and daring.

Consider the challenges of writing the adventures of a proto-human named Moon Boy and his non-speaking bright red T-Rex-shaped buddy Devil Dinosaur. They fight the big three of 1970’s pop science fiction: spiders, ants and robots. So, Moon Boy narrates their adventures in that Kirby-speak. That is a tall hill to climb and Kirby does his best, but the project seems doomed from the start. It is a failed bold experiment, but I salute the effort.

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Sturges’ logline for the book is essentially that it is ‘The Dirty Dozen with Elves’ which is a little misleading. Midwinter is an action and adventure story in the time of war placed in a fantasy setting. The story follows the former occupants of a prison across the world as it enters a once-every-hundred-years winter to complete a suicide mission. The characters are sharp and the story really moves. Okay, maybe the logline works.

It unfairly suffers by comparison with its sequel The Office of Shadow which I read in the manuscript stage. While Office of Shadow is great, Midwinter is a good first novel and an interesting window into an alien culture. These books made me rethink what I was writing at the time. For the moment, I can’t think of better praise.

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