Literature
Professor David Ullman’s wife is cheating on him.
His melancholic nature has distanced them, and their
eleven-year-old daughter, Tess, is so like her introspective
father that David’s wife feels like an outsider.
Tess lives in a world where psychic intuition foretells
the horrors yet to come – horrors of which her
father is not immediately aware. A foreign lady seeks
David out because he’s a demonologist whose expertise
in Milton’s Paradise
Lost is necessary to investigate a “phenomenon”
in Venice,
Italy,
and adds that his academic qualifications are what they
seek. David, heavily in debt and heading for divorce,
can use the fantastic sum of money she offers.
David’s
wife feels Tess is moody, that David and Tess share
a darkness that has left her feeling stranded. So when
David discusses going to Venice,
his wife agrees that Tess can go as well. But once
there, a demon possesses Tess. As she falls from their
hotel room into a canal, she calls out to him to find
her. David becomes all too aware of the demons and spiritual
creatures that walk the world, and in a way, he becomes
one as well. One who takes an emotional journey, wandering
and determined to find his daughter – and perhaps
himself?
It’s
been a long time since I've read a mesmerizing, excellent
horror novel that had my heart racing and my nerves
jumping at the slightest sound, but The Demonologist reached
that rank and surpassed it. Andrew Pyper has written
a fast-paced, tense horror story and psychological thriller
that kept me on the edge of my seat. Definitely not
for the faint of heart, The Demonologist will
keep you reading well into the night, too afraid to
turn off the lights.
|
