Demon (Gaea) by John Varley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Demon (Gaea)
Book Review: A fine adventure it was ...
Summary: 5 Stars
And I'm sorry it's ended. It leaves you wanting more, which is exactly the point. But Varley ends it all wonderfully. What an imagination on this guy! The rest of the reviews here say it all, and better than I can. If you love sci-fi then this trilogy is a must. And of course you have to start at the beginning (Titan).
Long Live Rocky!
Book Review: A fitting resolution
Summary: 4 Stars
Though not quite as good as Wizard, this is a satisfying and pleasing resolution to the story line. Though the conclusion is telegraphed 3/4's through the book if not earlier it still was not disappointing.This is the most plot driven, character intensive of the three books. Exploration and discovery of Gaea are minimal and thus the wonderment of the previous books is lessened.
The plot is developed naturally from what we knew before, the Hollywood obsessed ancient goddess is losing more of her faculties and needs to be dealt with. A plan is hatched and carried out.
As with Wizard, the beginning sees the introduction of a new character who becomes a major companion of Cirocco as well as the reappearance of some of the original crew for the conclusion of the book.
Like all the best endings, it is merely an ending, not the ending with many questions created and possibilities revealed for the future of Gaea, and the characters.
Book Review: A good ending.
Summary: 4 Stars
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.Book Review: A satisfying conclusion to this imaginative trilogy
Summary: 3 Stars
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.
Book Review: An astonishing climax to a magnificent trilogy
Summary: 5 Stars
"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.)