Blood-soaked, horrific, and gritty, Rob J Hayes’ Demon is a novella that pulls no punches and doesn’t shy away from showing off Hayes’ vivid imagery. Brutal ‘till the end and supremely fast paced, Demon is a book that demands to be read in a single evening. 

“Consequences are like your shadow. Sometimes they’re before you, and sometimes behind, but they’re always there. You can never escape your shadow, no matter how far you try to run from it.”

Demon starts off in a village where people are afraid to use fire in fear of garnering the attention of demons. Dien, our protagonist, is a girl who’s learning her father’s trade and dealing with bullies and friendships. While page one shows us her father allowing himself to get beaten for a perceived mistake in his crafting, it’s mostly a quaint and peaceful setting. 

And then demons come. 

An absolute massacre occurs. The survivors are forced on a brutal march where they are occasionally forced into cannibalism. They’re weak, they’re tired, and they’re ready for a break. 

They get no reprieve. The suffering continues in Demon where characters are forced into the servitude of their captors. Torture and death are fairly commonplace in the dank cave they exist in, and it’s breaks more than a few of them. Still, there’s a certain unbreakable resolve in some of the characters. The tenacity of the human spirit is a trope that always sits well with me, and Hayes has that in spades with Demon. 

The pacing in Demon is mostly rapid, excluding a slower lull in the middle. Hayes has always had an ability to keep readers engaged, but Demon was frustratingly difficult to put down. Without the responsibilities of life I’d have easily finished it in one sitting. 

What truly makes this story shine is the gruesome imagery and action. Visualizing the setting to the highest degree is unavoidable in Demon. Guts and viscera coat the ground, blood coats the wall, and suffering fills the air. Still, Hayes adds a dash of human connection and bonds. He uses it like a lever: at times frustrating in the bullies’ cruelty, others deeply tragic when the characters we’ve grown to like suffer. This is a novella that makes you feel a wide gamut of emotions. 

Dien is a nicely created protagonist. She mostly clings to rage, but every once in a while you see the mask slip. Her shoulders slip as the weight of being the beacon of hope for her friends becomes too much to bear, but after a breather, she’s right back up and trying to make escape plans. Dien is the heart of Demon. An angry, bitter heart with teeth instead of veins, but a heart all the same. 

“If you can retain enough pride to do the right thing, even in the face of scorn and ridicule, you can inspire that same pride in others.”

One of my very few problems with Demon is that I found most of the side characters fairly one-dimensional. That’s probably to be expected in a story of this length—and certainly doesn’t apply to all of the side characters—but I could have used a bit more nuance in some of the humans. My other problem is that the ending feels a bit sudden. There’s angels in this world and some sort of war going on between the divine forces, but we see very little of it.

Ultimately, Demon is a gritty, heart-breaking, viscerally horrifying story that should delight any and all grimdark fans. It’s book one of one of the three trilogies that Hayes is writing for Godeater, and something about the series feels special. Hayes is calling his homerun here, and Demon is a deliciously dark story that shows he’s living up to that promise. 

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