I first read this Crawford Fantasy Award winning book back in February for the SciFi/Fantasy board on the Barnes & Noble book club site. I instantly fell in love with it but was not able to give it the complete attention that it deserved. I finished reading it then but I knew my mind wasn't focused on it so I was missing quite a few gems. I just now finished reading it for the second time and boy am I glad I did.

This book blew me away. It is a combination of urban fantasy, post apocalyptic, SciFi, and psychological thriller peppered with pop culture references galore. The result is a fantastic mosaic artfully put together by this fist time novelist.

In a nutshell the basic plot line is this, in the 1950's demons started possessing people sometimes with fatal results. The "demons" fit into personality archetypes found throughout pop culture.

The story follows Del Pierce who as a boy was possessed by the demon known as the "Hellion" think Dennis the Menace to the nth degree. The Hellion was exorcised, or so everyone thought. As a adult Del ends up going back home to his family to recuperate after a serious car accident and realizes he may not be alone after all. What follows is a rather touching and surprising journey to heal himself and become "whole".
I don't want to give away the ending to much but I will say about half way through the book you should start getting an idea of what is about to come. What Del/Hellion slowly discovers will surprise you but the further along you go the more you realize that this was really the only way the story could go. That everything you had read before led up to this moment of self discovery and acceptance.

Along the way the reader will be treated to an appearance by author Philip K. Dick, a priestess who will remind you of a Irish songstress, and encounters with many pop culture icons (think Captain America). ( )

Something strange has happened to Del Pierce. As a child, , he lost control of his own self and fell under the spell of some sort of power which, while temporary, changed the course of his life. He is not the only person who has suffered from these "possessions". However, as he returns home to Chicago after a self-appointed stint in a psychiatric hospital, he is the one most determined to find their cause and get the voices out of his head.

Pandemonium is set in a world just a hair's breadth removed from our own. On Del's Earth, there is a long history of people being possessed by sudden and unexplainable behavior; behavior attributed by many to so-called demons. These incidents follow a number of trends, as if there are numerous entities flying about, each with their own pattern: the Painter makes its host create works of art out of whatever material is available, the Truth dresses in black and seeks justice with the help of a pair of .45's, the Little Angel gives young girls the ability to end the lives of the old and sick with a kiss. There seem to be many of these spirits, archetypes, or powers among us, and no one can agree on what they are or what they are doing.

Mr. Gregory does not give his readers a moment to grow accustomed to the strange new traits of his alternative reality, opening his story in the middle of an airport as the protagonist, Del, watches a possessed man follow out a demon's strange but harmless script. We must catch up with the rest of the book's characters who find these incidents frightful but almost routine, with their own branches of study, theory, and fan bases. Deftly, he avoids exposition, working explanations as to what the heck's going on in the character's dialogue. Interspersed through the story are what might be called case files of individual demons, revealing more of his world and the alternative history he has created. If you are anything like me, you'll be disappointed by how few of these are included, leaving the rest of the possessive cohort as little more than names casually mentioned and never explored.

The subtle little changes Gregory has made to the world, and his ability to integrate them into what we know, reminds me of Michael Chabon, as does Gregory's trend of giving his characters and his prose a realistic and clever level of pop-culture awareness. Though, for the most part, this book has a stable sort of magical realism, the author was more than willing to throw in a touch of absurd, a bit of action, and a dash of alien horror to satisfy most any pallet. At times, Pandemonium can sound ridiculous, but they all make sense in the world of the book. Gregory weaves in an excellent subplot of identity and personal understanding as Del travels across the country to try and understand what happened to him. As he and the reader find out, some answers hurt. Overall, the writing is not only humorous and engaging, but very aware of aware of the challenges of simply understanding what it is to be human. I have not read any of Gregory's short stories, but I will certainly be on the lookout for them and, if we're lucky, another novel out of this excellent modern author. ( )

The writing is smooth and engaging, and the story kept me interested the whole time. I did spot the twist in the tale before the reveal, but not from far off. That's some trick. It means that the author pulled me in far enough that I was reading faster than I was analyzing, which I do seldom.

It's polished and witty, with charm to spare.

http://reflectionsedge.com/index.php/... ( )

Like Daryl's short stories, this novel is sensitively written, vivid, imaginative, reflective, and very human.

well, human or demonic. depends on your perspective. ( )