'Demons' – Guy N. Smith (Arrow Books)

And so my quest to read all of Guy N. Smith's horror fiction, that doesn't have crabs in it (I've read all those already), continues with no end in sight. Which is no hardship, lets make that clear, but on nights like these I can't help but think, damn how many books did that man write? And, will I ever catch up...? ;o) Maybe, maybe not, but either way, I seem to have accumulated a small pile of Guy N. Smith books (spending far too much time on eBay but anyway...) to work my way through in the meantime. And first from that particular pile... Nineteen eighty seven's 'Demons', sequel to 'Deathbell' (reviewed Here).

As a macabre joke, three youths rehang the satanic Deathbell, which brought terror and destruction to the village a decade before...

Once again, the Deathbell rings, enslaving all who hear it, turning its victims into deaf-mute maniacs. Even when the village is flooded to make a reservoir, a drought eerily resurrects the buildings – and the Deathbell itself.

A band of hippies squat in the ghost village, natural successors to the bell's original Tibetan worshippers. These new slaves make human sacrifices to appease their voracious master, and another orgy of crazed evil begins...

You know the score by now so I won't hang around too long... I polished off 'Demons', as a 'Commute Read' and an 'Evening Read' too, over the course of yesterday, and there was a lot to enjoy here, there really was. It's another heady mix of pulp horror and naked ladies (well, one naked lady but it feels like she's in a state of undress fairly often) which I'll get onto (not literally...) in a second.

Before I do though, I couldn't help but feel like the focus that I normally feel in Smith's work wasn't quite there this time round. It's not enough to have the Deathbell return for a sequel (and I can understand that, any sequel would need more than just the same bell ringing again), there has to be more evil in Turbury to back it up. Smith certainly obliges but there's no sense of connection 'between evils' and while a lot of what is thrown into the book does stick, there's no real sense of cohesion and I missed that. For example, some poor workman is lured into the reservoir by some evil sprite, marooned underwater and... that's it. We never see the sprite again and the workman? He isn't dead but we never see him again either, not even when the reservoir dries up and the village is accessible again. What happened there? Is there more evil in Turbury that we didn't see in the last book? I don't know...

Luckily, it all seems to come together in a series of moments that are often unsettling and sometimes just stomach churning. Basically, the sort of thing you've come to expect from a Guy N. Smith book and the sort of thing that he does really well. You get into the book and realise that it doesn't matter where the evil has come from, only that Vicki and Aden must stand and face it, all the time in the knowledge that the bell could toll at any moment. Those are some high stakes (and again, Smith isn't afraid to show us the consequences of these) and that's not only what got me into the book but kept me reading as well. In Smith's books, evil is relentless but not all powerful. It can be turned back by people sticking to what needs to be done, or can it. Smith is very good at asking big questions of his main characters; how much can anyone be reasonably expected to handle before they break? Like I said, it's high stakes stuff, and Smith's leading players have plenty about them to get behind.

I'll be honest, I think 'Deathbell' is the better read (from where I'm sat, anyway) but 'Demons' has a lot going for it and it does round off the tale of the Deathbell in a satisfying manner. And sometimes, that's all you want from a book, something to entertain. 'Demons' does that very well indeed and was a great way to 'de-stress' and wind down after one of those days yesterday.