Customer Reviews

Memory of Demons, A

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David Ambrose sells well "across the pond" but never really found an audience in the USA. Why, I have no idea.

No one really screws with your head like Mr. Ambrose. Books like "The Man Who Turned into Himself," "The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk," Coincidence," and especially "Superstition" throw the reader into a 5 dimensional kind of worlds where time overlaps with itself and the true nightmares happen when our eyes are open.

His stories are filled with parallel universes along with dreams that might be reality and realities that might be dreams. He leaves you guessing till the last word of the last page and then your own personal thoughts become the last chapter of each book.

"A Memory of Demons" is no exception. The story hits hard and fast from the first page and never lets up. We are able to view the story from different angles and settings, only to eventually have it neatly tied up with a little bow...but not tied too tightly. For, the story will still continue in your own mind long after the book is placed back on your bookshelf, where the exposed binding will be viewed as a chapter of your own life when you took an incredible journey inside the mind of David Ambrose.

I don't think so.

*Warning! This review contains spoilers!*

I think David Ambrose really blew it with this one.

Digging through my memory bank, I can't help but smile at the wittiness of his earlier novels, particularly 'Superstition' and 'The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk'. There was an invisible border between the impossible and the improbable in these stories that David never dared to cross. Even in 'Coincidence' and 'The Man Who Turned Into

Himself' he kept the notion that there was a slight possibility of his theories to be true, a believability factor that although

strange was somewhat probable.

But in 'Memory of Demons' he crossed that border. His book is no longer exceptional. It quite resembles the countless other bedtime horror novels that one reads to fall asleep. In all honesty, I saw no difference between this work and the works of John Saul or Dean Koontz.

'Memory of Demons' evolves around the life of a recovering alcoholic called Tom and his young daughter Julia. The readers are ushered through an account in Tom's past where he may have committed a murder in an alcohol induced stage although this is unclear until the latter part of the book where the author reveals what truly happened.

At some point, Tom's daughter becomes obsessed with the entity of another girl that had disappeared a number of year prior to Julia's birth.

After shuffling back and forth through Tom's immediate struggle with Julia's transformation and his recurring dream of something that may have happened in some old house some years back (I know this sounds convoluted, but the book actually reads that way) the author reveals the identity of a killer and then by backtracking through the murderer's younger years, the readers find out what makes a killer a killer (phew, I actually finished that sentence). And, in like any bedtime novel, the author marries all ends into a beautiful knot of the all pleasant Hollywood ending.

Since this book is not published in the US, readers have to order it from overseas. The truth is, I don't think it's worth the international shipping costs and would not recommend it.

Sorry David, but I'm a bit disappointed in you this time.

-by Simon Cleveland