For some reason I have yet to figure out, I cottoned onto John Shirley as an author worth collection… despite not being a fan of horror. I think it was partly because in the early 1990s, he was producing some exciting stuff – Wetbones, Heatseekers, Eclipse, A Splendid Chaos – and, like Lucius Shepard and Lewis Shiner, two genre writers I admire, he began publishing limited edition novellas through small presses. Anyway, I have a number of his books in those signed limited editions, and yet most of them are, well, pretty forgettable. Demons – not to be confused with the Ballantine collection of the same title which includes this novella/short novel (and which I’ve had to link to on Am*z*n because the Cemetery Dance limited edition is apparently very rare) – is fairly typical of Shirley’s output. The gonzo horror inventiveness, the slightly off-kilter approach to the world, nailed into place with the careful use of details, the often slapdash prose, and a story that’s usually more than it appears. In Demons, er, demons start to appear, all over the world. And they kill people, without rhyme or reason. There are seven specific types of demons, which a glossary before the story helpfully describes, and which artwork in the book depicts. Ira is an illustrator for an occult magazine and a bit of a slacker. He’s love with Melissa, the daughter of Dr Paymenz, an occultist professor at a California university. And he’s with them when the demons appear. The three manage to hook up with a symposium of like-minded academics, where Ira learns of the Conscious Circle of Humanity, a group of 23 psychically-gifted people who keep humanity safe, and about a conspiracy which prepared the world for the demons’ arrival. Eventually, they figure out that various large-scale industrial accidents were triggered to usher in the demons, so that a small group of men can use the ensuing slaughter as “sacrifices” to gain immortality. Cliver Barker would probably have made a 900-page epic out of this plot, but in Shirley’s hands it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Better than I had initially thought. But I’m still not sure why I collection Shirley’s books. ( )

I loved this book. What sets out to be a strange, PKD satire 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 it's 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. ( )

I loved the bestiary of demons provided in the beginning of the work. It was so imaginative and darkly comical that the remainder of the work seemed base in comparison.