(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia)
It’s a rare thing indeed to pick up a fantasy novel and to have it be not only fantastically imaginative, with audaciously fun world-building that knocks your absolute socks off, but to be full of off-the-wall ideas that are hilarious, engaging and which come to life in the hands of characters who are a metric ton of wonderful with which to spend time.
But Inner Demons by Stephen B. Platt is that rare piece of storytelling magic, a tale of a Dwarven sister named Nelbow strying to get some sorcerer-centric help to free her brother from demon possession – don’t think your nasty run-of-the-mill tales of demonic possession because Arran, the spawn of Satan in question, is far from your average demonic possessor – who has to wrangle a cantankerous retired wielder of magic called Grumblechin who turns her unwanted caller into a frog because the two can even have a reasonable conversation.
The absolute joy of Inner Demons is that it takes all these hilarious off-the-wall ideas and larger-than-life characters, all of them equipped with a gift for witty language and clever turns of phrases and crafts a novel that will nail your soul to the wall and really make you feel something even as you trigger all kinds of complaints from your neighbours about the ridiculously loud laughing emanating from you.
It’s a fiendishly clever piece of work that happily looks at the world side on and from some charmingly oblique and eccentric angles but which also knows its way around the vagaries and contrariness of human nature, and yes that’s an imprecise terms for a book filled with Dwarves and Orc private investigators (a fellow named Orsnart Rogotg; what a name, right?!) and a host of other stock fantasy creatures and tropes.
Nelbow went to swing Grimblechin’s staff like a club at the nearest Widow when she was tackled from behind by an unseen eighth Widow. She was quickly subdued, and her hands bound behind her back. Nils was similarly detained, and the entourage of Widows took them to the assembled crowd.
What makes Inner Demons stand out so brilliantly, apart from the fact that it’s a metric ton of magic-saturated FUN, is that Blatt takes these well-worn fantasy elements and use them in breathtakingly original and hugely enjoyable ways.
Sorcerers might do sorcery but they also can be sick to death of interlopers and just want to spend their time acting like a cranky old woman while Dwarves may dig very much in The Lord of the Rings style – the books is full of in-the-know references to Tolkien’s classic trilogy including a playfully inventive collective name for Halflings – but also want adventure and sunshine-filled cities.
Blatt has a huge amount of imaginative fun tilting tropes and cliches on their heads, sides and arses, and defying their propensity to do the same old thing again and again.
It’s somewhat epically, blockbuster nuclear though the way Inner Demons does it because Blatt doesn’t just subvert a little, he subverts a LOT, but in ways you don’t get tired of and which will have you happily flipping pages like a reader until a Furious Read spell, eager to get to the next hilarious twist or turn.
(courtesy official Stephen B. Platt Facebook page)
What’s lots of fun too are the notes that pepper each chapter every two to three pages or so.
Blatt has a way of making silly in-jokes that actually don’t wear out their welcome, which add to the sentence or phrase that are asterisked too with so much extra enjoyment, and which are their own hugely amusing universe of hilarity quite apart from the giftedly passages they are augmenting.
It’s easy when you are making these kinds of humourous asides to come as nerdily twee or earnest, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it can mean that the bottom-of-the-pages become a little too in-jokey and self-referential.
By way of contrast to the norm, Blatt’s footer jokes are inspired and go some way to making Inner Demons even more accessible than it already is, adding an intelligent sitcom vibe that may well appeal to people who might not ordinarily want to go anywhere near a fantasy novel.
Helping that mass appeal along is the fact that the characters feel very relatably flawed and grounded.
Again, it’s hugely tempting to make your fantasy characters way larger-than-life because you want to create a sense of epic otherworldliness, but while that can be a great way to add some serious hero cred to your tale, it can mean the characters feel a little distant and emotionally set apart.
That never happens in Inner Demons because while the characters are (mostly) competent, they are also battling their own metaphorical demons (no possession here, thankfully) and don’t always act wisely or well.
A ripple moved through the fabric of this cosmos until it became actual cloth, pulling the night sky into the dye of the robes worn by a tall human woman with a pointed nose and a prominent chin. Nelbow gasped.
And that, my friends, is why Inner Demons feels like the kind of fantasy novel you might recommend to a voracious reader looking for something different.
If you’re a regular reader of fantasy, you will likely voraciously consume Inner Demons, like this reviewer did, and enjoy the love affair with many well-loved tropes and cliches that come wrapped in a quip-heavy, hilariously idiosyncratic meta knowing bow.
But if you have never darkened the halls of fantasy, this novel could be your gateway read to the genre, because it does the usual and does some creatively unusual, very funny and relatably human things with them, and you’d have to be an orc or dwarf or elf made of concrete not to enjoy the mischievously fun journey Inner Demons takes you gleefully on.
Part road trip, part crime novel, part urban noir, Blatt’s debut novel, and please god let him be signed up for many more, is a rollicking ride through the joys and agonies of family, community and friendship, through the blazing mysteries of magic and the ho-humness of the everyday, with its all taking place on a square planet with six sides.
If that’s not enough to tempt you, and c’mon, all the other planets are round, then Inner Demons serves you a fantastically involving but not overwhelming plot, characters you will ADORE, dialogues that pops and guffaws in equal measure and a sensibility that offers up good old fantasy like your nerdy mother used to make with some jocularity added in for good measure, all of it coming together in one of the fantasy reads of the year.