TO KILL A DEMON

A gay man fights to prevent a demon from taking possession of his soul in Brightwater’s fantasy novel.

Kino Lim is a Singaporean man living in Taiwan, a devout Christian who is filled with self-loathing over his homosexuality. Into his apartment troops a beefy demon named Samon, who sports a cream-colored three-piece suit and is trailed by seven hollow-eyed women who do his bidding without question. Samon matter-of-factly informs Kino that the pastor of his Singaporean church has sold Kino’s soul to him. To buttress his claim, Samon demonstrates his ability to stop time and cause teacups to hover in midair, and also shows off a magic Polaroid camera that causes anyone it photographs, such as Kino’s flat-mate, Boris, to vanish into thin air; Samon promises to return Boris to the earthly plane if Kino surrenders his soul the following Sunday. Seeking a way out of the situation, Kino and his other flat-mate, Winn, go out hiking and fall in with a feisty ride-share driver, a woman named Tai. The trio survive a scrape with a gang sent by Samon to spy on them, then corner Samon in his den in a Taipei preschool, where the demon gains the upper hand. Samon and Kino continue haggling over Kino’s soul, and Samon grows so exasperated that he uses his time-stopping power to cause an airliner to crash. Kino visits an all-male nude spa, where he encounters an apparition of a young girl floating in ethereal light and is further fortified by a blissful orgy in a sauna. Kino dutifully reports to Samon’s preschool for a final confrontation, which devolves into a lengthy battle royale pitting Samon against Kino, Tai, three police officers, and a mysterious blind woman from the future who arrives through a tunnel from the Taipei subway.

Brightwater’s yarn mixes horror with action and a gay-friendly spiritual theme: Shame and internalized homophobia invite the devil in; self-acceptance sends him packing. His writing is evocative—“He had the rough, lean, worn musculature of someone who, though never exercising (beer, gambling, and dull sex didn’t count), had yet to run to fat”—and many scenes are vivid and cinematic (“One of its wings dipped, swinging down, swiveling toward the ground. In an instant, as if the dipping wing were dragging the rest of the aircraft, the whole thing plummeted toward the earth”). The narrative is haphazardly structured, with speeches and fights that drag on too long, and Brightwater’s prose sometimes feels too histrionic (“Her mud smacked the gangster in both eyes. He abandoned the belt and buried his face in his hands, squealing like a newborn in outrage at the womb’s end”). Samon is a blustery, malevolent, charismatic villain and Tai is a belligerent hoot, but Kino is a passive, limp hero who spends more time sobbing over his problems than solving them; readers may wish that Samon had set his sights on a more interesting soul.

An entertaining occult adventure hindered by ungainly pacing and a weak protagonist.