Customer Reviews

Demu Trilogy

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4 star:		(1)
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An invigorating look at human/alien first contacts, from the perspective of a human abductee. The Demu are exoskeletal aliens with the religious belief that they are the only true beings with souls, and a crusade the mold all other species to look and act as they do. Mr. Busby's exploration of how and why the Demu became what they are is in-depth and appealing, and raises many simularities with terrestrial humans and predudices of all kinds. Mostly, though, just a darn good action and, oddly enough, love story.

Busby has a good thing going (a great thing actually) when he wrote the first 45 pages of this trilogy. A mini-synopsis would go something like: `After awaking, Barton finds himself imprisoned with strangers of human and alien. Later, being in solitary confinement, Barton plays mind games with the mysterious aliens who hold him captive.' This alone was a great story, albeit short. It had all the great nuances which evoke concentration to the reading, absorption in the plot and a yearning for the conclusion.

THEN Barton introduces Earth into the plot, where the politicians, scientists and military analysts are all plotting around getting back at the Demu race, who have kidnapped humans and tortured them in their experiments. Here is where the plot loses all steam as page after page is full of planning, more planning and a countdown until the plan is unleashed. All the while, Barton's sex toy of an alien is getting plastic surgery so that they can commence their horizontal frolicking.

When the Earth-made ships are off into space and arrive at friendly alien planet, a party is thrown where humans and aliens alike scamper off to bed each other. Once all the gear is aboard, the ships set off, more eye-rolling frolicking continues and finally the ships reach the Demu planet where their ultimate plan is set aside for a better alternative- all with a terribly predictable ending.

The remaining 37% of the book has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the Demu and only adds more sex scenes for Barton, more sex scenes for the other cast, more sex scenes for the plot in general and a obvious conclusion to the end of the book... which, predictably, ends with a Barton, again, in bed with his alien sexpot.

Reminiscent of Busby's other novels that I've read reviews of, the author casually throws sex scenes around so casually it seriously distracts from the plot, which had little to hold my attention anyway. Perhaps if I were a 12 year old boy, my attention would have been undivided but for a non-stop science fiction reader like me, the plot is flat after page 150.

One other reviewer said it was a love story, too. If you consider someone shallow like Barton who urges his sexpot to change herself physically through surgery after surgery to make her look more appealing and sexually functional... and you think that's love, then yes, it's a love story.

I'll pass on any Busby I come across in the future. Avoid this one.

I wanted to like THE DEMU TRILOGY, but for the reasons that the other negative reviewer gave, I found the book disappointing. The best part is the first novel, which is gripping and frightening. The next best part is the short story written to give a slightly different take, from an alien viewpoint, on a critical moment in the first novel. Busby managed to create an alien race and an alien mind that a reader could feel he or she could actually begin to understand. The second novel, without giving anything away, seemed to lose steam with great suddenness about two-thirds of the way through. The third novel has almost nothing to do with the Demu plot of the first and second novels and the bridging story, and I can see why it never saw print as an independent book but rather was published in book form to fill out the volume. The plotting lurched back and forth, with little or no sense of how to resolve the conundrums that the author threw at his characters. And the characters themselves felt increasingly perfunctory as the pages flipped by. I would not recommend this book at all.