Demon Dagger by Russell James

​Russell James has been around for a while. Writing perfectly serviceable if unremarkable genre stories. This is a fine example of it. A story of demonic possession with the titular object heavily featured as a killing object. Not exclusively, but the best one for a book title.
So you have your protagonist Drew who as a boy learned to see demon-possessed people (psst…they cast no shadow) and became an apprentice to a demon slayer. As an adult, Drew just wants to have a normal life but those demons just won’t leave him alone. So he does the normal adult thing by day and slays demons by night until his diurnal and nocturnal activities eventually bleed into each other. Notice the use of bleed for it is a bloody business.
And so, alternating between past and present, alternating between character drama and demon-slaying action, the novel rolls on at a fairly steady pace, unfolding much as one might expect. You can just see a tagline for a B-movie adaptation – Demons. This time it’s personal.
Drew has a cute kid but a terrible wife. Seriously, what’s with Drew’s wife? For all their supposed lurv, she’s constantly on a verge of a divorce; all too willing to believe the worst of her dearly beloved and all too willing to boot him out. Terrible, really.
The rest of the characters are ok. The writing’s ok. Toward the end it gets sillier and cheesier, but the backstory kind of offsets it, balancing out the overall tone.  The entire thing is ok. That’s sort of the author’s base level – ok. Like write by numbers sort of thing with all the boxes checked, but nothing special offered. And yet, he continues to have a productive career and being featured by publishers like Flame Tree Press so either he’s doing something right or the audience has a certain yen for mediocrity.
Anyway, a thoroughly decent thoroughly average read of demons and demon-slayers…and daggers. Thanks Netgalley.