Book Review: 'Night and Demons' by David Drake
David Drake passed away at age 78 on December 10, 2023. He certainly was a familiar writer to many of us who enjoyed science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction during the era (1968 - 1988) covered by this blog. He played a major role in reviving the genre of military sci-fi after it had fallen into disfavor during the New Wave era.
Save for Joe Haldeman and 'The Forever War' (1974), few works about war and combat in the sci-fi milieu, that were anything other than thinly coated diatribes against militarism, were published when I was a teenager. Indeed, the only anthologies to deal with the subject were the 1975 anthology 'Combat SF', edited by Gordon Dickson, and Haldeman's 1977 anthology 'Study War No More'. Drake's short story 'The Butcher's Bill' was one of the standout stories in 'Combat SF'.
I've had a review of 'Night and Demons' banked away in my draft pages, and it seems condign to post it at this time.
‘Night and Demons’ is a thick chunk of a mass market paperback, at 768 pages (though the last 68 pages are a bibliography of David Drake’s published works). It was published by Baen Books in December, 2013 and features cover art by Alan Pollack.
Multiple anthologies of Drake’s short fiction have been issued over the years, most notably ‘From the Heart of Darkness’ (1983) and ‘Balefires’ (2007), but ‘Night and Demons’ is the most comprehensive, as almost everything appearing in the earlier anthologies is accounted for in ‘Night and Demons’.
Each entry in ‘Night and Demons’ features an introductory remark by Drake in which he imparts a personal reminiscence of how the story was composed and its initial fate when submitted to the editorial world of fantasy / horror publishing in the 1970s and 1980s.
My capsule summaries of the stories in ‘Night and Demons’:
The Red Leer (1979): sometimes Indian burial mounds are better left alone. A decent 'monsters on the loose' tale.
A Land of Romance (2005): a humorous treatment of the mythic Storyland of childhood.
Smokie Joe (1977): the only horror story I am aware of that features a particularly unpleasant venereal disease as a major plot point. Is it Proto-Splatterpunk ? I'd like to think so !
Awakening (1975): short-short story about an elderly couple with an interest in the occult.
Denkirch (1967): a deranged scientist investigates Cosmic Mysteries. There are consequences.
Dragon, The Book (1999): written as an entry in the Martin Greenberg and Andre Norton Catfantastic V anthology, this is the tale of the wizard Hardin and his cat companion. For reasons that are unclear, Drake smothers this story in pulp prose and a surfeit of adverbs, adjectives, similes, and metaphors. Maybe that's what's expected in contributions to a Catfantastic anthology ?
The False Prophet (novelette; 1989): this features Drake’s recurring character Vettius, the Roman soldier. Here, Vettius and his friends investigate a mysterious holy man who has enthralled Rome’s wealthiest and most influential citizens. The initial pages are filled with conversation and are quite boring, but the story closes with sufficient energy to justify the early investment.
Black Iron (1975): Vettius and his friends hear the tale of a magic sword.
The Shortest Way (1974): Vettius and his friends decide to take a shortcut that the locals take care to avoid. An atmospheric tale, and one of the best entries in the collection.
Lord of the Depths (1971): Greek sailors come upon a deserted city, where lots of treasure is lying about. This may be too good to be true……..another of the better tales in the anthology.
The Land Toward Sunset (1995): Robert E. Howard’s characters Cormac Mac Art and Wulfhere the Skullsplitter find themselves cast away on an island ruled by wizards with ulterior motives. There is much sword-and-sorcery action.
Children of the Forest (1976): who knew Bigfoot roamed German forests ?!
The Barrow Troll (1975): Ulf Womanslayer, a Viking warrior, gets wind of buried treasure and decides it should be his, even though it's guarded by a very nasty troll............
Than Curse the Darkness (1980): Lovecraftian hijinks in deepest, darkest Africa. The prose is painfully stilted; this is the first time I ever have encountered the simile '......like an ant run blown by carbon disulphide.'
The Song of the Bone (1973): in Viking Land, Gage the herdsman is an enigmatic figure.
The Master of Demons (1975): a short-short story about a medieval mage who seeks to master Arcane Forces; this never is a good idea.
The Dancer in the Flames (1982): Lieutenant Schaydin is troubled by disturbing hallucinations.
Codex (2003): first written in 1967, but not published until 2003 when it appeared in a chapbook, this is the tale of some University students who decide to translate a Medieval text from Latin into English. What they learn from the translation offers access to otherworldly wealth and power.
Firefight (1976): U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam choose a bivouac location with a disturbing history.
Best of Luck (1978): Another story set in wartime Vietnam. Dog Company seems to be getting the worst of it in firefights.
Arclight (1973): In wartime Cambodia, an encounter with an ancient artifact leads to problems for an armored unit.
Something Had to Be Done (1975): a US Army team sets out to deliver bad news to a soldier's family. A much-anthologized horror story from early in Drake’s career, and one of his best.
The Waiting Bullet (1997): first composed in the early 70s, Drake later completed this story for inclusion in the final issue of Whispers magazine. It’s a story about a violent death in the piney woods of North Carolina. For reasons unclear to me, Drake uses the adverb (?) ‘shudderously’, which I cannot find in any online dictionary.
The Elf House (2004): Cashel the barbarian comes to the aid of a servant girl who insists on venturing into dangerous places.
The Hunting Ground (1976): people are disappearing from an urban neighborhood in North Carolina. Lorne, a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, decides to investigate. Another of the better stories in the anthology.
The Automatic Rifleman (1980): some anarchists are up to no good.
Blood Debt (1976): overly purple prose weakens this story about Judson Rigsbee, who lives in the suburbs and practices black magic.
Men Like Us (1980): in post-apocalyptic America, not all settlements are particularly welcoming to strangers.
A Working Bibliography of David Drake's Writing, by Karen Zimmerman: a listing, current as of 2012, of all of Drake’s published stories, novelettes, books, and essays and nonfiction pieces.
Summing up, ‘Night and Demons’, like practically any anthology, has its share of worthy, and less worthy, content. There is enough of the former to justify giving the anthology a Four Star Score. Drake fans will of course want to have a copy in their possession. Those with a fondness for fantasy and horror literature of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s may find it appealing, as well.
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