Book review: Carpe Demon

Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner (2005)

Overall		Story
Re-Readability		Characters

Imagine if Buffy the Vampire Slayer retired, settled down, married, had kids, and became a soccer mom — then was suddenly faced with a resurgence of demonic activity in Sunnydale, and had to fight the baddies while throwing dinner parties for her husband, getting the kids to school, and keeping it all a secret? Well, you don’t have to imagine very hard, because Kenner basically lightly files off the Buffy serial numbers to present just that scenario. Instead of Slayers we have Hunters; instead
of Watchers, we have the Vatican’s Forza; but it’s all pretty much there.

How does it work? Um … okay.

Story: Just as Kate Connor thinks her suburban life can’t get any more complicated — her husband’s running for DA, she’s juggling a teenaged daughter from her first marriage and a toddler from her current one — a demon comes crashing through patio door, signaling her safe little domestic life is being invaded by her secret past as a Demon Hunter. Out of shape, out of touch, and so not wanting to go through that life again, especially with a husband and kids, what’s she going to
do? Especially when she becomes suspicious that someone very close to her is in service to the same High Demon that’s orchestrating the reinvasion of the town?

To call this book fluff is, to some degree, to denegrate fluff. It neither fully succeeds as a horror/action/adventure novel nor as a study of the harried domestic suburban housewife’s lot. The plot meanders, key points get telegraphed, things seem to happen more for the sake of complicating matters than because they make sense, coincidences abound, and the whole thing ends up as a clear setup for future books (of which at least one has come out in hardcover, a second lined up for June).

That said, it’s not bad, just mediocre. As someone who’s got an active child growing up for whom we try to balance our work lives and her activities, too, a lot of it rings true — or at least truish. There’s a decent mythos here, too. In more polished hands — heck, let’s just say Joss Whedon — this could be hip, edgy, entertainment. As it is, it’s a bit … pedestrian. Except that’s too strong an opinion, because there’s nothing here to actually provoke a
strong opinion.

The standard question — the artificial bit that makes life for Kate a lot more complex than it needs to be — is why she doesn’t tell her husband (and daughter) what’s going on. The former’s already had to face some of the secrets, and if there’s a reason Kate doesn’t confide in her husband part of the time, that’s pretty much wrapped by the end of the book. One has the sense the secret must be kept simply because sharing it would uncomplicate the story too much. Which is
weak (if stereotyped) plotting.

Characters: The harried housewife. Her supportive but clueless best friend. The mildly rebellious teenaged girl. The sweet but demanding toddler. The loving if distracted husband. There you go. Oh, yeah, there are a few other players, but you could probably write their dialog, too.

Re-Readability: Maybe. The book doesn’t depend on too much stuff that, once read, is spoiled. I might go back to it, especially when the next one comes out.

Overall: Cast in the best light, this is light-weight entertainment with some promise, but weakened by chick-lit fluffiness, less interested in some ways in writing a taut suspenseful modern-day action-horror novel than the mildly humorous travails of a put-upon housewife. I’m willing to pick up the next installment when it comes out, and won’t feel guilty about loaning out this one, but have still preferred something a bit more like Buffy in tone, if it was going to be like
it in settting.