Pandemonium

Rating NR Genre fiction Author Daryl Gregory Publisher Del Rey

After reading Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory, I definitely understood why the book was titled the way it was.  To me this book was a jumbled mess of inconclusive and sometimes incoherent ideas that never actually made much sense in the end. The book follows the life of a man named Del.  He was possessed by a demon called the Hellion when he was young.  Although he thought an exorcist rid him of the demon, he finds that the Hellion is still trapped inside of him and trying to get out.  This book follows Del’s quest to rid himself of the demon.

The book also describes other possessions and the demons themselves. It asks questions about what demons really are.  Many people see them as archetypes or forms of the collective unconscious, but their purpose and meaning are not very clear and there is not much there to dissect.  The demons themselves are described, but fail to be very impressive or thought provoking.  For example, one is a train conductor and he takes trains on wild rides, sometimes killing people.  There is also a demon that is a captain and will heroically die for a cause.  The demons and their purpose never make much sense and the book doesn’t seem to have an over all meaning that would be able to be related to our current society.  Pandemonium just gives excuses for people’s actions, adding to the “not my fault, not my problem” society we are living in.  Ultimately, I Gregory tore down the integrity of humanity, showing them as nothing more than empty boxes for demons to fill and take total control over at any time. Since he took out the concept of good and evil, the demons just become like little viruses that people catch. Somehow the idea that you can catch something that will totally change who you are just cheapens humanity. 

Pandemonium is void of anything inspirational and is not very thought-provoking.  It seemed to be a jumbled mess of ideas and questions that never have any resolution or sometimes even any point.  The book was also very depressing.  There seems to be no hope and no sign of good.  When dealing with the concept of demons (normally thought of as an ultimate evil) a reader desires to see that there is some goodness left in the world.  However, this whole book is void of goodness and faith in humanity.  In fact, even the “nun” who “helps” Del along the way is a cussing, violent, angry, and an impure person. The one person who would be expected to be a form of hope and goodness is very twisted, just like the book.

It’s obvious Pandemonium wasn’t written to be the feel good novel of the year, but if a book is going to be that depressing and utterly serious, the author usually owes the reader some glimmer of hope or some gem of wisdom that can be taken away.  Unfortunately this book is void of both.