Pandaemonium

Pretty funny, all and all. The dialogue was great, but I thought the plot was just a little too strained. I'd read more Brookmyre, though.

I have been reading pretty solidly for 39 years and by now I have a fairly good idea of the kinds of books I like and the kinds of ones I don't. But not wanting to be entirely predictable I occasionally try something that I think will not be my sort of thing. Just in case. Usually this works out as expected. For example I thought [b:Eat, Pray, Love|19501|Eat, Pray, Love|Elizabeth Gilbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1294023455s/19501.jpg|3352398] would be utter pants and it was. But there was a slim chance that it might not have been so I gave it a go. For another example I didn't really expect to like a horror story in which most of the plot is driven by teenagers (horror being something I grew out of when I was about 20) (around the time I last had a lot to do with teenagers en masse). But in this instance the slim chance was in my favour. I loved Pandaemonium.

The story is a simple one. The senior students of St Peter's Catholic High School are taken on retreat to a remote spot in the Scottish highlands because one of their classmates stabbed another one of their classmates to death and someone in authority thinks that a bit of hiking is just the thing to get them all over their ordeal. Unfortunately their camp site is next door to a mysterious Ministry of Defence facility at which experimentation goes awry in a major way and the gates of somewhere closely resembling Hell are opened to unleash creatures intent on killing all humans they encounter. The kids therefore have to stop their dancing and snogging and fight for their lives with not much more than their wits and a rolled up tea towel.

A little bit more than half of the story takes place before the fighting of monsters begins which should be a point against the book but Brookmyre takes care to paint such vivid and varied portraits of the children, their teachers and even some of the military types that by the time the monster-fighting started I was heavily invested in caring about the survival of the characters. Their secrets, heartaches, crushes and worries are so credibly human that you can't help but fall in love with them collectively and hope they'll triumph over the daemons which you know are just around the corner.

And while on a surface level the language and the violence (I'll be honest, neither are for the faint-hearted) might lead some to think the book is just cursing and gore there is another level to it. There is the gently laid out moral tale that you wish all teenagers could be made to understand without having to go through the trauma of seeing their friends mutilated beyond recognition. And then there is the deep and very thoughtful questioning of both the trappings of organised religion and the very nature of faith itself. This theme is also not for the faint-hearted though if like me you spent 12 unhappy years in a Catholic girls' school you just might identify with one of the students and her musings...

"Most of the time Caitlin can just zone out during mass, let her mind drift so that the tedium passes quicker but occasionally she can't help but pay attention and that's when the sheer inanity of it really grates on her cognitive faculties...We believe in one God, the father the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, a.k.a the intelligent designer. The Vatican had latterly decided it could accommodate evolution within its view of creation, largely because it could no longer accommodate the embarrassment it was feeling by continuing to do otherwise, but it was adamant that acceptance of evolution didn't preclude God from having started it. Yes, God set in motion this astronomically complex process but knew all along despite the infinitely branching possibilities created by an incalculable multiplicity of random factors that the end product would be mankind. Begging the question if that was always the plan why did he take the long way round instead of creating mankind right off the bat?...Having waited 9 billion years for earth to form then having held off for another 4 and a half billion for his chosen species to fully evolve he blows his wad early by sending down his Messiah during the Bronze Age? If he wanted us to believe in him and to live by his word couldn't he have hung on another infinitesimal couple of millennia and sent his miracle working super hero ambassador in the age of broadcast media and other verifiable means of record instead of staking 13 and a half billion years work on the reliability of a few goat herders in an insignificant backwater of a primitive civilization?"

Which of course brings us to the writing itself. It is bitingly clever, funny and quick and you sense that every individual word has been carefully considered before being slotted into exactly the right place. How else would a description of teenagers as "sophomoric mind clones pathetically enslaved by the tyranny of cool" come about?

Pandaemonium is undoubtedly not for everyone. If you don't like rude language, horror-style violence or the questioning of religious dogma then I'd suggest you stay away. But if you can live with those things and enjoy great writing and human characters with all their foibles then give it a go. Even if it doesn't sound like your kind of thing there's a slim chance you'll love it and sometimes taking a risk pays off.

What about the audio book?

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Though (confession time) I might be a little biased. It is narrated by a Scottish bloke (Kenny Blyth) and I adore the Scottish accent. Seriously. A Scottish lad could read me the phone book and I would swoon. Heck I'd swoon even if it was a Scottish lassie. But still, it's a delight to listen to. ( )

Pandaemonium or Pandemonium (American-English) is the name invented by John Milton for the capitol of Hell, it's name is normally translated as All-Demon-Place. The high capitol was built by fallen angels at the suggestion of Mammon & was designed by the architect Mulciber, who before his fall designed palaces in heaven.

Christopher Brookmyre's Pandaemonium Is the story of the pupils of St Peter's High School & what happens on their retreat at a secluded outdoor activity centre set in the wilds of Scotland. They are on this retreat to try to come terms with the murder of a fellow pupil, this will involve the usual techniques of counselling, contemplation & prayer - not to mention booze, drugs, sexual liaisons & a great deal of partying.



Buried beneath a mountain, the US army has a secret base, in which they have some how opened a mysterious portal, from which hordes of big scary creatures with horns & tails come pouring out. Thinking that they've discovered an entrance to Hell & being the military, they slam a lid on it, and send for the artillery, which in this case is Cardinal Tullian, head of The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as The Inquisition. There's a lot of experimenting on the creatures (holy water, Crucifixion etc.) there is also lots of bad feeling as the scientist are being replaced by the churches brethren.

Back at the retreat the pupils are getting ready for a disco, with planned shenanigans aplenty.

Guess what happens ?

Yes, ALL Hell Breaks Loose.

Christopher Brookmyre, says on the back of this book "Two very different worlds are about to clash in an earthly battle between science and the supernatural, philosophy and faith, civilisation and savagery.

The Bookies are offering evens."

http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/christopher-brookmyre.html ( )

The audacious yet lovely Christopher Brookmyre does it again. A bunch of teenagers from a Glasgow school are taken to a remote lodge as post-trauma therapy after a murder/suicide at the school, while scientists, the military and church functionaries are very carefully tangling with anomaly-spawned entities deep below the same mountain: entitles with pointy teeth, horns, and forked tails. Brookmyre's ear and eye for teenage stuff is as fine as in 'A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil', while his devilishly playful theological speculations spirit the reader into a hall of mirrors. Demons really exist, therefore it would be a stunning coup for the Church to reveal them; but perhaps they are only beings from another dimension, in which case they need to be suppressed for fear of fuelling belief that the Church's edifice of Hell is a fraud; but then maybe that is all part of the real Satan's real plan to discredit the Church?! Never mind: wait until the mad scientist releases the captive demons and watch the carnage really begin. And there is bagfuls of zestful carnage, gleefully referencing all the tropes of classic slasher/horror; the pious torn apart, the naughty shaggers dismembered, the good guy skewered. Sex'n'death and 'Dog Soldiers' thrown in, or was it only the Scottish setting which suggested that to my mind? And the ending is pure Evil Dead 2. Brilliant Brookmyre. ( )

I love Brookmyre's dark and wrong dialogue and storylines. I've read all his stuff and liked each one.
This one is slightly different in style in that the usual parallel storylines have a more obvious linkage much early in the book than in others of his. It might have been this that made it slightly easier to read for me.
In any event, last night I went to bed to read my usual couple of chapters but I found I simply couldn't put the book down until I finished some two hours later.
It's probably the least believable of the storylines but is utterly engaging for all that.
Loved it. ( )