Subject: Review: PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING, by Christopher Moore

From: [email-masked] (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:24:13 GMT

PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING, by Christopher Moore
Review copyright (c) 1991 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

It's fairly common these days for a first horror novel to be compared to 
Stephen King.

It's _also_ fairly common for a funny first genre novel to be compared to
Douglas Adams.

H.P. Lovecraft, though, is a somewhat less common comparitor in these sad
and quasi-literate latter days.

But throw in Frank Capra and things get hard to comprehend.  Or accept.
Or whatever.

Yet that is precisely the set of comparisons that Tim Cahill makes on the
back cover of Christopher Moore's first novel, PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING.

Well, of course I had to find out.

To dismiss the comparisons right off:

It is like the works of Stephen King, in that it is about a Bad Thing invading 
a small community.

It is like the works of Douglas Adams, in that it is a funny and off-the-wall
satire of the genre it springs from and of modern society.

It is not like the works of H.P. Lovecraft at all -- though he appears as 
a character.

And if it bears any resemblance to the films Frank Capra beyond having a 
happy ending, I'd like someone to please explain it to me.

Okay -- then, what's it about?

There's this demon named Catch who's really pretty nasty, and he's in the
keeping of a fellow named Travis who's really pretty nice.  Catch eats 
someone every day or two, which makes Travis quite uncomfortable, so Travis
(who summoned Catch quite by accident) has been trying to send Catch back
where he came from since, roughly, World War I.

They come to the coastal town of Pine Cove, California, where Travis pursues
his quest to find the incantation to get rid of demons, while Catch pursues
his quest to find a master who'll use him for the purpose for which he was
intended -- that is, evil.  Over the course of the book, one of them succeeds.

Since this takes place in the '90s, some may ask how HPL appears as a character.
Well, I'm afraid I do too; but the nature of the book is such that you really
don't care.  He's just _there_, in Pine Cove, as the keeper of H.P.'s Cafe,
which serves such delicacies as "Eggs-Sothoth."  (This is, incidentally, the
second novel I've read in which HPL appears:  the first being Richard Lupoff's
very odd LOVECRAFT'S BOOK.)

The humor works, and, more importantly, stays in its place.  There are places
in Douglas Adams' books where he lets the weirdness take over and the plot goes
to hell.  This never happens in PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING.  The characters, though
weird, are all -- well, _almost_ all -- acceptibly weird:  they never caused
my suspenders of belief to snap violently back in my face.  Because they are 
both weird and plausible, the humor grows pretty much organically from the
story instead of being added in.

All in all, a good enough first novel that I shall be looking forward to the
second.  

(What?  The review's over?  And here I haven't even mentioned the King of 
the Djinns, or The Breeze, or. . . well.  Go read the book yourself.)

	%A Moore, Christopher
	%T Practical Demonkeeping
	%I St Martin's Press
	%C New York
	%D January 1992
	%G ISBN 0-312-07069-1
	%P 243 pp.
	%O hardcover, US$18.95