Demogorgon

by Brian Lumley

Charlie Trace, professional thief, is no stranger to deceit and violence. But nothing in his life on the knife-edge of London's Underworld could prepare him for the horror of Demogorgon.

It is centuries Satan is its lord and master. It walks the earth in the guise of a man, but it is not a it is the very essence of evil. Across many years.and nations, Demogorgon has sown the seeds of hell...now, it is calling its children home. Demogorgon's power grows with every soul it devours--and if Charlie Trace can't stop it, he will be its next victim!

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, Audiobook

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Brian Lumley was born near Newcastle. In 22 years as a Military Policeman he served in many of the Cold War hotspots, including Berlin, as well as Cyprus in partition days. He reached the rank of Sergeant-Major before retiring to Devon to write full-time, and his work was first published in 1970. The vampire series, 'Necroscope', has been translated into ten languages and sold over a million copies worldwide.

He was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010.

Reviews

[Chuck Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of Lumley and remember reading this in high school and loving it. Fast forward (ahem...) thirty some odd years and I find it on Audible. It still holds up! I still love the ending. This is a standalone novel that is way more religious/occult horror instead of the vampires or cosmic horror Lumley is known for. But don’t let that stop you from reading this underrated gem.

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Lumby's Vampire series "Necroscope" but his other horror doesn't do much for me. The stories just seem to drag and proceed forward slowly. not recommended

[Thee_ron_clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brian Lumley gives us a story of Biblical proportions. Well, he gives a story that revolves somewhat around the Bible.

In this novel, a thief finds himself a part of a great battle between the forces of good and evil that is seemingly being won by the evil side. The thief has some things revealed to him about his past that cause him to seek out more answers. This plunges him even deeper into the saga.

Over all, this is a decent story. Lumley paints some pretty interesting new scenarios. He also continues to demonstrate his ability to create uncanny horrors. The final saving grace was the nice plot twist that I was not really expecting.

Unfortunately, I felt there were a number of flaws. Most of the characters seemed flat to me. The love interest, which seems a necessity of Lumley's work caught me as being less than realistic. It was almost too rushed with little reasoning behind it. I also found some of the endings of the "bad guys" to be anticlimactic. Really, I didn't think that some of the "bad guys" really gave us enough reason to care whether they lived or died. In a way, I suppose the same went for the other side as well.

Stick to the Necroscope novels for better work by Lumley, especially the Blood Brothers series. Otherwise, this makes for an alright read if you really aren't expecting a lot.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Demogorgon (1987) knits together an early 1980s televangelist "antichrist porn" zeitgeist with mainstream pop horror as only Brian Lumley can deliver it.

Chorazin comes into it, and there are some archaeological aspects which also make this a novel worth reading.

* * *
     "'Can you tell me,' he said, 'anything about Chorazin?'
     "The deacon seemed startled, but readily reminded him how that village had once been denounced.
     "'To be sure,' said Mr Wraxall; 'it is, I suppose, quite a ruin now?'
     "'So I expect,' replied the deacon. 'I have heard some of our old priests say that Antichrist is to be born there; and there are tales -'
     "'Ah! what tales are those?' Mr Wraxall put in.
     "'Tales, I was going to say, which I have forgotten,' said the deacon; and soon after that he said good night."

From: "Count Magnus" by M. R. James (1904)

* * *

Chorazin: FAQ
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~par...

[Tucker Dobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like my rating for this book is hovering somewhere between 2.5 and 3 stars.

There were elements of the story that were super fun. The globe trotting adventure elements, the mystery elements, the fantasy elements. The villain was great and compelling and had an interesting backstory and set of rules. Throw it all together and think Indiana Jones meeting James Bond and H.P. Lovecraft. I also enjoyed how pulpy this book felt. Some sentences made me feel like I was reading an issue from E.C. Comics or turning the page on one of Junji Ito's famous reveals. The climax had a great monster and a very cinematic display of its power.

However, there were some significant elements that didn't land for me. Most notably is the focus of the story. We spend a fourth of the book before we meet the guy who it's supposed to be about, and honestly, I didn't get the feeling that it was ever truly focused on him. He is upstaged at most every turn and at the climax plays a very passive role. There is also a scene between him and his flat love interest that made me say, "We really doing this right now?"

A lot of scenes were just people explaining a *lot* of different things, although for the most part those things were interesting bits of lore, so I'm struggling with how to feel about it.

The denouement was disappointing, too. Not a fan of characters imbued with infernal power using it for selfish reasons. Although, I suppose we're not meant to think Charlie Trace is all that good of a person.

This was kind of a disappointing experience, because it's discouraged me somewhat from diving into Lumley's Necroscope series. But then again, I still might down the road. Even if Lumley's character work leaves something to be desired, he does a bang up job when it comes to interesting concepts, and concepts are what intrigue me about Necroscope.

Anyway, after reading this, I think I want to read something about a character imbued with infernal power using it for *selfless* reasons. So, I'm just gonna read Hellboy some more (and you should, too, by the way).

[JPR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro lo tenía apuntado hace tiempo en mi lista de "rarezas a comprar si me topo con ellas". Pues curiosamente hace relativamente poco lo encontré acumulando polvo en una balda de una tienda de libros de segunda mano.

Como ya he comentado lo tenía apuntado hace tiempo en mi lista de futuras compras y por lo tanto me abalancé sobre él cual vampiro sobre una yugular adolescente.

Si me preguntáis de donde había sacado este libro os diré que simplemente fue su título el que captó mi atención ya que me recordó al monstruo cósmico de la serie de Stranger Things.

Su autor, Brian Lumley nos abandonó este mismo año con más de 86 años y para recordarlo que mejor que hablar de esta rareza.

Estamos ante un libro que mezcla terror, aventuras y thriller a partes iguales. En él encontraremos demonios, ciudades perdidas, profecías, violencia, leyendas, religión, violaciones, conspiraciones, ... Una auténtica maravilla que aunque no tenga muchas páginas se tarda un tiempo en leerlo ya que la letra es pequeña.

Te atrapa desde el principio hasta el final de una manera increíble. Si cae en vuestras manos comprarlo sin dudar, pasaréis un buen rato. A mi me costó poco más de dos euros y aún estoy relamiéndome.

¡Disfrutad impíos!

[Antonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Facilón y ochentero, entretenido.

[Sean McBride · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not my favorite Lumely book. In fact this reminded me quite a bit of Baal by Robert McCammon. There is a whole lot of build, but the characters never truly meet the level we expect and everything seems just...superficial. Even building to the climax of the book was fairly lack luster, and the twists that Lumley put in were blasé. The opening sequence was the only part of the book that was engaging, but once Trace makes his appearance...the book goes down hill. He's supposed to be our antihero, a thief with the heart of gold type character, though we are only told he's a thief, we never actually see anything like that in action. None of the characters are all that believable and the whole thing just felt like is was poorly thought out.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not a bad book per se, good idea, good characters, etc. Where it suffers is the author realized he only had so many scenes and needed to make a word count. It starts about a quarter of the way into the book, right about when you'd realize it, and leaves off in the last quarter when you're writing on the home stretch.
The middle though, some potentially great scenes are bogged with too much description looking to pad.

[Monica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Se me ha hecho una lectura muy cuesta arriba, densa y poco interesante, no se porque ya que tenia muchas ganas de leerme esta historia. Lumley no es un mal narrador, pero no logro engancharme, cosas que pasan.

[GD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty decent horror novel with an awesome cover!

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

B movie quality!

[Tabatha Shipley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Demogorgon by Brian Lumley

What I Didn’t Like:
-Not as scary as I wanted. This one is more cerebral than I was expecting from horror. It’s a scary concept, it’s a scary thought … but you won’t find yourself truly scared while reading it.
-Sense of hearing this story before. It’s not exact but you’ll catch things that remind you of lots of other works that deal with sort of a biblical good vs evil mindset.
-Moves slow. That’s not what I was expecting because normally horror moves pretty fast. This one definitely takes its time languishing in details and trying to tell a good story. Makes for an odd dichotomy.

What I Did Like:
-The ending. If the story itself is too similar to other things, that ending makes up for it. I always appreciate when an author takes a book completely in a direction you weren’t expecting, so I loved that.
-Detail. I just mentioned this as a negative, because it doesn’t mesh well with the genre, but it’s worth mentioning that the author here CAN tell a good story. He weaves detail about the setting into the story so that you can accurately picture it without getting bogged down in a paragraph about setting.

The Verdict: 3 stars. The fact that this one is billed as horror but isn’t actually scary was problematic for me. I don’t want to discount the writing, which is great, or the ending which is amazing in the way it diverts expectations, but if you’re expecting scary things this falls a little short.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this on my library app - Hoopla. I love hoopla, but sometimes the formatting seems off. I am not sure the paragraph breaks are always in the right spot, and I definitely noticed some typos. Anyway, I would say the reason I am giving the book 3 stars instead of 4 is because of the flow/formatting. Conversations between multiple people in a single paragraph leads me to rereading paragraphs multiple times to figure out which character is saying what.

That stated, I love the author taking a quote from Milton about Gorgon and turning it into a novel named Demogorgon long before Stranger Things came out. The life of George is subtle dark humor. Very good. Charlie Trace is a hard protagonist to like.

[Γιώργος Μπελαούρης · Rating 4 out of 5]

now this one waz ''the reaping'' if bernard knew how to write :P
not the best of lumley bt lumley is always awesome
the beginning and the chapters in greece (although they reminded me 2 of the necroscope books inevitably) were real page turners
our protagonist was a little meh, bt the action, the gore and the suspence were really tight
fun time, absolutely recomended to be read in summer in greece

[WayBackWhen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy the book but I did really enjoy Lumley's writing style. The first chapter of this is quite good. Everything is easy to picture though he rambles often and the story was just not engaging in the slightest. I did not enjoy the main character, Trace, in any form or fashion. I will definitely be giving Lumley's other works a try however.

[alek · Rating 2 out of 5]

jesli ktos by po to jednak siegnal (nie polecam) to tw sexual assault

[Nick Belhomme · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the writing style of BL however the plot of the book has been done a zillion times. Read really fast and i wanted to keep reading, but brings Nothing new to the table...

[David Sarkies · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book that I can't remember all that much about
1 April 2012

Once again I went to look at the reviews and I pretty much saw nothing. There were a couple of comments about how it was a pretty good horror novel though not much better than Necroscope, but that is basically about it. It seems to me that there is really not all that much to trigger any memories about this novel. It is not that I read it a long time ago, I didn't, but it was something that was sitting on my shelf that I had picked up off a friend a while ago when he was giving away all of the books that he didn't want. Now I have read this book I don't particularly want it either. While it is horror, I am not a big fan of horror, and if I do want to read a horror novel it has to be really good (which you generally can't work out until you begin reading the book, and even then, I don't like not finishing a book that I have started unless it is really, really bad).
I guess the only reason I grabbed this book from the pile that was being offered was because of the name. Being an avid Dungeons and Dragons player since I was a pre-teen I was familiar with Demogorgon. He was a two-headed demon lord of the abyss. Personally that is about as much as I know of him, and I really do not know anything about his real world counterpart. I do remember a time in my pre-teen days when one of my friend's Dad was reading the rulebook and was horrified at the content. He brought both of us into the room and began to show us how the game referred to books on witchcraft and as such Dungeons and Dragons was bad. So we decided to create our own roleplaying game, and we did muck around with it for a while until my friend became a fundamentalist Christian like his dad and refused to have anything to do with roleplaying games anymore.
I guess I look back on those days and the times when other fundamentalist pastors were insisting that a Christian shouldn't play Dungeons and Dragons, and their only answer was that I was dicing with the devil. Instead I needed to reject all of the world's offerings and pretty much lock myself away in the church, only leaving to earn an income and to evangelise the lost. I look back at those days and think that while I do love the Christian community, I felt that the restrictive lists of don'ts was simply not helpful. Even the bible tells us to steer away from the concept of 'do not touch'. While I accept the ideas steering us away from factionalism, gossip, greed, and sexual immortality, I do not believe that we were ever meant to hide ourselves from the world and reject the world as evil. To put it bluntly, it is not.
I will point to two passages to support my argument that we are supposed to interact within the world, one of them being the Great Commissioning, and the other being the Parable of the Talents. The great commissioning tells us to go into the world to make disciples of all nations. It is not make short forways into the world in an attempt to bring back anybody who may be interested. Paul didn't do that: he went and lived among the people of Greece and Anatolia, and later Rome. He went to the people and spoke to the people, and built the churches from the ground up. As for the Parable of the Talents, one is so scared that he buries his talent and is condemned for it. In reality, we must not become like that.

[Mistydawn Thrash · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmmmm...what to say about this book?

I went back and forth on whether I even liked the style of writing. I am that torn between liking and hating it. I think the story is a decent one but I think it wasn't told very well, even though it gives off the air of being thoroughly researched. I think the details were very satisfying but at times too many details ruined the imagery. I think the book itself moved right along at a decent pace but the storyline took forever to play out. I liked the characters but I hated how some were detailed down to a single hair on a nose and some were vague you could barely recall them at all when they popped back up. In all, I feel like the author played favorites in his writing. Giving some ideas and some characters life and breath and others a blot on a page.

The actions scenes were rudimentary and held nothing exciting to capture my attention. The romance scenes were the same.

The attention to detail of the places they traveled to were more so then the characters that were supposed to be front and center. I found myself wondering why this one character, who seemed really nothing special had the ability to fight off and counter situations stronger men could not. He just didn't feel as though he was cunning nor strong. The woman who was supposed to be strong somewhere turned into a blubbering little girl, with no strength and no redeeming quality to the book. She was supposed to be a distraction to the character and really just ended up a distraction to the entire story.

I did like the end, which I won't spoil here. Can't help but like a daring ending.

All in all, from other reviews I've read Brian Lumley's previous work might be better then this novel. If I should read his name on the spine of a paperback in a dime store I might pick it up. I won't go looking for it.

Read more at Thrashdthoughts.com

[Mark Muckerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I like Lumley as an overall author, I fear he's become of victim of his own success: His Necroscope series is so original, so strong, and so well written, that all of his other works are compared (fairly or unfairly) to that series.

Demogorgon is a decent read, and a story with a strong premise and fair plot. Where it suffers is in immaturity of writing (says the armchair critic who writes nothing more than 4 paragraphs of opinion). The premise is intriguing and the opening successfully captures the reader early. However character development is spotty, and the story unfolds more as a clumsy effort to be both adventure story and clever historical fiction, but in trying to be both, it falls short of really achieving either.

A three star rating would have more historical and developmental context of core history and mythology, more development of Trace's journey of discovery from West to East, and a more fully fleshed out Act III before climax. Such expansions would have given a depth, richness and texture to both the characters, the pace and the plot, and added another 100 - 150 pages. [Perhaps not coincidentally, that would also put the size and depth of this book in the arena with his Necroscope works, which do successfully carry the depth and maturity I think this story lacks].


All that said and aside, it's still a pleasant read, and if expectations are kept moderate, it satisfies. Certainly another successful investment from the used book store, but a disappointment at full price.

[Neil Davies · Rating 1 out of 5]

As much as I liked Necroscope, this book just didn't do it for me.