Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis
What’s Deal Me In?
“Retro Demonology” by Jana Oliver
Card picked: A♣ – Finally a club!
Found at: Amazon freebie
The Story
This is an introductory short story for Jana Oliver’s Demon Trappers series.
Riley is the seventeen year-old daughter of a prominent demon trapper, out on her first solo capture. The demon is a minor one, a biblio demon. Biblio demons like tearing up books and, uh, spraying green urine all over the place. It’s currently annoying a “retro” couple. Retros in this world are people who have decided to live as though they are still in another era—in this case the 1970s. The demon was attracted by a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, but is also menacing a collection of Doors albums. This being Riley’s first solo capture, she’s nervous, but things go rather well. That is until the demon gets loose during the car ride home. Actually, things don’t even work out too poorly then: Riley avoids a car accident, gets out of her traffic ticket, and even manages to easily recapture the demon.
While the story gives a taste of the Demon Trapper world, it doesn’t do a lot plot-wise. As concerned as Riley was about the assignment, the stakes were pretty low. Actually, I wish the details would have meshed together a little better. Seeing a biblio demon doing something really nasty at a bookshop, maybe, instead of spit-balling a page of Milton would have been more harrowing.
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 
Bibliodemon?!? Oh, my. AND, he’s trying to wreak havoc for those working on the Frankenslam! And Doors albums? This demon is truly evil.
What is an “Amazon freebie” and how does that work?
P.S. I’m off to the Frankenstein retreat this weekend at DePauw University. I suspect I’ll be the least scholarly dude in the room(s) but I should come back with lots of blog post fodder. 🙂
I clicked through the link you tweeted about the retreat and noticed “cocktails throughout the weekend.” Man, my English classes would have been so much better with cocktails…
Amazon freebies are free Kindle ebooks. Often authors (especially indie authors) will have short stories or novels available for free. You can usually find them if you poke around the genre specific best seller charts.
Ah, thanks for the info on Amazon freebies, I thought (hoped) it might be some kind of clearinghouse that one could check periodically. Usually, when i follow links to free e-books, I can never find any that I’m interested in reading.
I’d forgotten(!) about the cocktails part of the retreat. Maybe I won’t be the least scholarly person there after all. Who knows what kind of crowd the booze will attract. 🙂