Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
You can get away with your novel being as weird as you like as long as you make it readable.
Pandemonium is pretty weird. It features a number of bizarre characters including demons who make their possessed hosts act out elaborate superhero fantasies, a lake monster, Sinead O'Connor re-imagined as a priest of an obscure catholic sect,, a paramilitary force on the watch for (effectively) the aliens from They Live*, and a demon who has taken over the persona of Philip K. Dick.
And it all mostly works because everything is delivered in a straight-up , thoroughly readable fashion.
Honestly, I'm not sure I got as much out of this novel as I could have because I'm not as familiar as I could be with the collected works of Philip K. Dick and A.E. van Vogt. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
* Actually Slans, but really the parallels are uncanny.
View all my reviews
