Demon

Rating:
Summary: An astonishing climax to a magnificent trilogy
Review: "Demon" is one of those books that seems to have its own soundtrack, as your mind fills with a swirl of dramatic music repeatedly through this book, which is the cinematic equivalent of a great science fiction adventure movie.

Of course, it's not a movie you're likely to see any time soon: Leaving aside the pop culture obsessed alien goddess' obsession with old movies (including something that the owners of the "King Kong" copyright surely wouldn't want shown on the big screen), there's nudity, budget-busting settings and aliens and, the biggest killer of all for adventure movies, lots of smarts in "Demon."

John Varley is clearly having a ball in this third story of the Gaia trilogy, following up "Titan" and "Wizard." Each slowly built in tempo, until in "Demon" it's almost wall-to-wall war with an alien entity INSIDE the same alien entity.

We get believable flawed heroes battling against impossible odds with intelligence and wit and a mind-bending assortment of memorable alien species.

And while the whole trilogy has discussed the thematic issue, it's in "Demon" that the relationship between man and God is really looked at. Some reviewers have thought that Varley's examination of matters of faith in previous novels was the sign of an unreligious or anti-religious author. Apparently, more than two millenia of theological discussions are somehow anti-God for these people. I find Varley's examination of faith in this trilogy, "Steel Beach" and "Millennium" to be bracing and, if anything, to turn my thoughts Heavenward much more than any sappy "Touched by an Angel" story could do. (Of course, I also like Morrow's "Towing Jehovah," so maybe I'm already damned from the get-go.)

I've read far more books over the years than I care to count, but every few years, I dig out my old Science Fiction Book Club copies of Varley's classic trilogy, including the hardback version of "Demon" with the giant naked Marilyn Monroe (!) on the cover and revisit Gaia.

The trilogy is a masterpiece of characterization, setting, plot and theme, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Herbert's "Dune," in my opinion.

A must-read series for fans of science fiction and science fantasy. (And not a bad read for lovers of pop culture, either.)

Rating:
Summary: A good ending.
Review: A good ending for an excellent series. All the characters from 'Wizard' are back. Contrary to some reviews, I didn't find it hard on religion. The book treats all religions equally.

Rating:
Summary: Demon
Review: All three books (Titan, Wizard, Demon) were fabulous. Without a doubt, one of the best series (or stand alone books) I have ever read. I had pretty much avoided science fiction for over a decade and a half until I read Varley's Steel Beach recently. Because of that book I was curious about what else the author might have written so I tried this series. Wow. The wit, insight and imagination combined with multiple characters that you really care for. And the love between the two main characters transformed this from an adventure to something great. Few characters in literature have been more heroic and tragic than the character of Gaby (my favorite character in the series). My only complaint- I want a fourth book!

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the long wait!
Review: Demon completes a fabulous trilogy, from a great writer who should write more. Demon will impress itself on you, you will not regret reading it. If you have read Titan and Wizard you will buy it anyway, if not buy all three now!

Rating:
Summary: Great ending to a great trilogy
Review: Demon is the best of the Gaia trilogy. I'm not sure if it is Varley's imagination or insanity that drives this book. You won't regret reading the trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite novel
Review: DEMON is the conclusion of Varley's Gaea trilogy (TITAN and WIZARD are the first two). The incredible imagination and dramatic skill Varley demonstrates in WIZARD finally come together to explode in DEMON. The ending is brilliant and unexpected--and utterly dramatic: Varley's diversity of characterization (arguably his weakest feature) here is at its best. This is a book about rebellion, freedom, passion, strength, identity, and even love--ironically, because many of the characters are grotesquely violent, even visceral. But he reaches the depths in order to explode to heights which are yet somehow not tinted with melodrama. Varley's work is romantic, but not naive--definitely not naive. And it reaches its very best in DEMON. Easily his masterpiece, and easily my very favorite novel of all time.

Rating:
Summary: A satisfying conclusion to this imaginative trilogy
Review: Demon, the conclusion of the Gaean trilogy, is in my opinion the most satisfying of the three. In the first two books, I frequently got the feeling that Varley had bitten off more than he could chew, character-wise, and so filled in the gap with gratuitous sex scenes and fetishistically detailed descriptions of alien genitalia and reproductive modes. In constrast, Demon confines itself to being an epic adventure and does very well in this role.

Demon is more "stylistic" than the others. It is set up as a triple feature from the pre-cineplex days of motion pictures, broken into pieces like "Newsreel," "Short Subjects," "Feature One," etc... This affectation works well given Demon's subject matter. Gaea's godhood has finally driven her completely insane, and she has decided that all the world should be a film of her devising, that she is the arch-villain, and that it can only end with a hero coming to kill her.

In his descriptions of the insane deity, Varley uses all his considerable resources of imagination and humor. She has taken the incarnate form of a fifty-foot tall Marilyn Monroe and constructed an enormous movie studio / theatre / theme park called Pandemonium, where she and her lieutenants, mostly undead reconstructions of humanity's major religious figures (Martin Luther, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard), await the coming of a hero and commit various atrocities.

Varley spares none of his imagination in constructing Cirocco's allies for this final conflict, either. The best-constructed of these is Snitch, a small reptilian imp surgically extracted from Cirocco's own brain and a direct link to the mind of Gaea. Many of the characters from the first two novels also return, although in a changed form. For example, Gaby has become a ghost in Gaea's brain, Chris is in the process of turning into a Titanide, and Nasu the anaconda has grown to several kilometers in length.

In short, in the long tradition of epic heroism, Demon places an array of unlikely characters against a self-proclaimed Pure Evil, and in the end, they triumph. It stretches a bit long in places, and many of the inter-character interactions are more than a little thin, but that isn't the point. This is a book about being a hero, and a fairly good one at that.

Rating:
Summary: A satisfying conclusion to this imaginative trilogy
Review: Demon, the conclusion of the Gaean trilogy, is in my opinion the most satisfying of the three. In the first two books, I frequently got the feeling that Varley had bitten off more than he could chew, character-wise, and so filled in the gap with gratuitous sex scenes and fetishistically detailed descriptions of alien genitalia and reproductive modes. In constrast, Demon confines itself to being an epic adventure and does very well in this role.

Demon is more "stylistic" than the others. It is set up as a triple feature from the pre-cineplex days of motion pictures, broken into pieces like "Newsreel," "Short Subjects," "Feature One," etc... This affectation works well given Demon's subject matter. Gaea's godhood has finally driven her completely insane, and she has decided that all the world should be a film of her devising, that she is the arch-villain, and that it can only end with a hero coming to kill her.

In his descriptions of the insane deity, Varley uses all his considerable resources of imagination and humor. She has taken the incarnate form of a fifty-foot tall Marilyn Monroe and constructed an enormous movie studio / theatre / theme park called Pandemonium, where she and her lieutenants, mostly undead reconstructions of humanity's major religious figures (Martin Luther, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard), await the coming of a hero and commit various atrocities.

Varley spares none of his imagination in constructing Cirocco's allies for this final conflict, either. The best-constructed of these is Snitch, a small reptilian imp surgically extracted from Cirocco's own brain and a direct link to the mind of Gaea. Many of the characters from the first two novels also return, although in a changed form. For example, Gaby has become a ghost in Gaea's brain, Chris is in the process of turning into a Titanide, and Nasu the anaconda has grown to several kilometers in length.

In short, in the long tradition of epic heroism, Demon places an array of unlikely characters against a self-proclaimed Pure Evil, and in the end, they triumph. It stretches a bit long in places, and many of the inter-character interactions are more than a little thin, but that isn't the point. This is a book about being a hero, and a fairly good one at that.

Rating:
Summary: Who is John Varley?
Review: First, the commentarys must bet completed with the one I made to Titan.

When I start to read this book (I read it by mistake before Titan and Wizard) I start to read the last page so that during the book I tried to make a connection between the point where I was and the end... I read the last page, I read the two last pages and I read the three last pages, I start to read from the beginning and I still was amazed with the end. I confess that if I started to read the trilogy from Titan In the end shoure I had assassin feelings to Varley because ... the end It's so open...! every time that I read the trilogy I end it with more questions than anwsers, I felt a very strong need for a fourth episode. I even thought to try to talk with Varley to request him an explanation for the end, what he was thinking behind the words writen:"She opened her wings and flew away", was just a methaphor, because she was free of the responsability of the life of a specie, or like she thought "strangest things had happened" and really flew away? .

Rating:
Summary: Please write #4!
Review: I can't get enough of these books. John Varley really needs to write a fourth book before I go insane waiting for it. The trilogy starts out kind of difficult to read- there's alot of technical plot establishment, but the third book wraps it all up beautifully. Now if I could only find them in hardcover...