The Demonata

Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world...

The Demonata is the second full-length Fantasy Horror series by Irish author Darren O' Shaughnessy Shan. Unlike The Saga, this series has three narrators, with different books told from different perspectives.

The plot features far too many twists to be quickly summarised, but it starts with our first narrator, perfectly normal teenager Grubbs Grady in a perfectly normal town, long story short, some demon related stuff happens and... things go bad. Really bad. And then they get worse. And worse. And worse. After which, things really start to get nasty.

To say this series is violent is like saying the ocean is wet; lets make this clear- this story is for children, but right from the get-go the reader will be treated to some of the most ludicrously over-the-top ultraviolence ever put to print. The Demonata are evil with a capital E, and many, many characters die explicitly gruesome and horrific deaths on-page, to say nothing of the countless others whose horribly mutilated corpses are come across. You have been warned.

The series consists of ten major books:

• Lord Loss
• Demon Thief
• Slawter
• Bec
• Blood Beast
• Demon Apocalypse
• Death's Shadow
• Wolf Island
• Dark Calling
• Hell's Heroes

Tropes used in The Demonata include:

• And I Must Scream: Bec spends thousands of years trapped as a spirit in a cave. Her part of the Kah-Gash deals with memory. Specifically, remembering EVERYTHING.
• Anyone Can Die: And how!
• Bald of Awesome: Kernel Fleck.
• Bald of Evil: Lord Loss
• Blessed with Suck: Kernel has always been able to see patches of light floating around, and can use them to create inter-dimensional demon portals. On one hand, it gave him his little brother, Art.. On the other hand...having anything to do with demons in this world will not end well for you.
  • Plus, there's the whole "everyone thinks I'm insane" thing that he had to deal with.
• Bloody Bowels of Hell
• Break the Cutie: Here, it's considered lucky if you aren't disemboweled and eaten after getting broken.
• Brown Note: When Grubbs sees Lord Loss slaughter his family, Grubbs is literally so terrified that he's driven insane. It's implied that if Dervish had not shown up to tell Grubbs that there were people who believed him, and to just play along with the psychiatrists, he would have wasted away and died.
• Cavalier Competitor
• Chess With Demons
• Crapsack World: All the demon realms.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Dios mio!
• Cute Mute: Bran
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Demon Masters, most prominently Lord Loss.
• Downer Ending: Darren Shan is the master of this trope.
  • Hell, Bec, the main character of the fourth book, is actually killed at the end.
• Emotion Eater: Lord Loss. Its not totally clear if he is literally this and actually feeds on suffering, or is simply a lot more sadistic than the rest of his demon brethern, though they aren't mutually exclusive interpretations.
• Evil Albino: Juni Swann.
• Exclusively Evil: Demons, all the way.
• Eye Scream: In Book 2, Demon Thief, there are a good three pages where Kernel angsts about whether he's in the dark or he's gone blind. He's in the dark. But guess what happens to him in Book 9?
  • Book 6. There is a scorpion demon with a human face that stabs you in the eyes and lays eggs in them, which then rapidly hatch and eat your face from the eye sockets out. Kernel gets attacked by it. Yeah. Fortunately, some time between books 6 and 7 he learns to use magic to regrow his eyes, but only on the demon planes.
  • There's also an unfortunate guard who opens fire on a demon-queen. The bullets stop, turn into horrific bugs, and speed back towards the guard, latch onto his eyes, and burrow through to his brain. Basically, this happens a lot. Repeatedly to Kernel, but also to Grubbs and several others.
• Face Heel Turn: Nadia Moore is revealed to have joined Lord Loss, masquerading as Juni Swan in order to fool the others.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Boy, howdy. It would probably be easier to list those who don't die in the most horrific ways possible.
• Freudian Trio: Grubbs, Kernel and Bec, the three parts of the Kah-Gash.
  • The Id: Grubbs, the most powerful magically out of them and later also a werewolf
  • The Superego: Kernel, probably the most cerebral out of the three
  • The Ego: Bec, somewhere between the other two, and almost certainly the most diplomatic (as far as the setting allows anyone to be diplomatic)
• Gadgeteer Genius: Timas Brauss.
• Good Is Not Nice: Beranabus, and later Grubbs.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Mages can reattach and regrow body parts to some extent, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
• Gorn: Pretty much every fight scene. An extreme example shows up close to the beginning of the first book, with Lord Loss murdering Grubbs's family.
• The Grim Reaper: In a deviation from the traditional robed skeleton, this version of death is a malevolent, shadowy Cosmic Horror.
  • And he wants to end the world universe, with the aid of every demon in existence
• Gory Discretion Shot: Subverted, and subverted hard. At best the characters will comes across corpses after they have bee brutally torn to pieces, but even this will be described in savage detail. More often than not the insanely violent death will be carried out on page. There is no such thing as this trope in this series.
• Hell Gate: Windows, and the more powerful Tunnels.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Let's just say that teaming up with these demons is a bad idea.
  • No seriously, a reeeaally bad idea.
    • Bec seemed to do okay in Hell's Heroes, but then she wasn't really on their side. I don't think. It was kind of confusing
• I'm a Humanitarian: Demons seem to regard everything as potential food, including each other, and humans are no exception.
• Immune to Bullets: This one's actually a subversion. The demons are only vulnerable to magical weaponry. Along with swords and axes, that includes magical bullets.
• It Got Worse: Every single effing book Every single one of the them.
• Karma Houdini: Lord Loss gets off totally scot-free, and is left as the last demon with any kind of power in existence. In other words, despite his jaw-droppingly horrific crimes. he got exactly what he wanted and the rest of eternity to enjoy it with.
• Kill It with Fire: Sharmila's usual technique of battling the Demonata.
• The Legions of Hell
• Les Collaborateurs: Humans who side with the Demonata. It never ends well for them.
  • Unless you count Bec in the final book. But then, that was less being a genuine collaborateur and more an elaborate False Defection against Death. Lord Loss still manages to benefit nicely from it, though; see Karma Houdini. Even if that's still better than the alternative.
• Magic Knight: Every mage or magician qualifies as this.
• The Man Behind the Man:Death.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Lord Loss. Kinda.
• Mind Screw: Used frequently by Lord Loss to psychologically destroy his victims. It becomes a Crowning Moment of Awesome when Grubbs mind screw him back during the chess match.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Demonata tend to be this, explanation being they envy natural forms and end up copying them.
• The Mole: Juni Swan/Nadia.
• Narnia Time: Time travels differently in each Demon Universe so characters from different times can interact and end up similiar ages. Also leads to odd events such as Kernel returning to his parents after being missing for a number of years but he hasnt aged at all.
  • It gets funny when a Disciple asks who won the world war, when asked which one he says "there was another one?"
• Our Monsters Are Different: To be specific, Our Demons Are Different, Our Werewolves Are Different, and Our Zombies Are Different.
  • Also, Our Souls Are Different
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Lord Loss. Probably most of the Demonata. Also Beranabus and Bec.
• Say My Name: Bran to Bec
• Shapeshifter Default Form: Grubbs embracing his inner werewolf in book 8.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Grubbs' preferred method of fighting until book 8. Most recently, Kirilli.
• Shoot the Dog: Too many times to count.
• Shout-Out: In Slawter, the giant cockroach demon is named Gregor, a reference to the Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins. Bo even laughs at the reference, though Grubbs does not get the joke.
  • More likely a reference to Gregor Samsa from Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
• Took a Level in Badass: Kirilli, over the last couple books, goes from an incompetent whiner to a demon-killing machine.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Grubbs, Juni/Nadia. Most recently the Old Creatures when they talked to Kernel.
• Wicked Cultured: Lord Loss, to an extent.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Lord Loss makes a point of never lying, but he tends to speak in half-truths when it suits him.
• XanatosSpeedChess pile up: The whole series essentially revolves around Lord Loss, Death and the Kah-Gash each employing plans which include the other two and are decided by which of the three Bec, Grubbs and Kernel side with. In the end, Grubbs stands opposed to all three, Kernel has taken a fourth option and gone neutral and Bec sides with Lord Loss and employs her own ploy to trick Death and the Kah-Gash. Which is actually the best outcome, even if she does side with Lord Loss.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: When Kernel and his family finally move to a new home, start making friends with a little brother he loves, all of their schoolmates are massacred, and Kernel must go into the demon realms to get back his kidnapped brother. Who is actually Artery.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Any and all humans who side with the Demonata.

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