Mischief, mayhem and minions: Author Royce Buckingham introduces readers to the life of a Demonkeeper
Tsunamis that wipe out entire towns. Doors that creak when no one is there. Earthquakes that split the ground open. The world is full of uncontrollable phenomena, big and small, which threaten the order of civilization that humans have so carefully built up over millennia.In Royce Buckingham’s most recent fantasy series, demons personify the chaos that plagues mankind. The three books in the series follow the adventures of Nat Grimlock, a young Demonkeeper.
Demonkeepers are a secret order that has been policing and controlling demons for centuries. 17-year-old Nat suddenly inherits the job after his mentor dies under mysterious circumstances. Soon afterward a powerful demon escapes from Nat’s basement in pursuit of a homeless boy named Ritchie.
Nat’s race to recapture the rogue demon and save Ritchie in time sets in motion a bizarre series of events that sends Nat from the streets of Seattle to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Along the way he meets some allies as well as foes, including a vengeful Demonkeeper, known only as “the Thin Man,” who’s after his position.
In “Demonkeeper” and its sequels “Demoneater” and “Demonocity,” Buckingham has not created an alternate fantasy world, but a fantastical view of the mundane, where rust demons consume metal and demons in the form of sculptures come to life.
Demon encounters can be humorous, like the demon Gloop that can disguise itself as a booger, or deadly, like the water demon Drench that threatens to engulf the city of Seattle.
The human characters, however, are not always as clear cut as the demons. Buckingham does reveal Nat’s past throughout the trilogy, including the death of his parents and his natural ability to see demons when other humans can’t.
But the readers don’t know much about his love interest Sandy, or the street boy Ritchie.
Ritchie at least seems to mirror Nat’s personal story, at least from the little Buckingham reveals about him. He has had the ability to see demons from an early age. But how he ended up on the streets, or any part of his life before the action in “Demonkeeper,” is a mystery.Ritchie plays an extremely important role when he reminds Nat of his duty in the second book in the series, "Demoneater." When Nat realizes a wind demon called Flappy was the storm that killed his parents, he tries to take revenge. Ritchie calmly reminds him demons are only creatures of chaos with no will of their own.
“You taught me not to kill,” he says to Nat. “Even the dangerous ones. They know not what they do, right?”
Ritchie exhibits maturity as the series progresses, as do Sandy, who occasionally helps him catch a demon, and Lilli, a fellow Demonkeeper from San Francisco. Buckingham hints that they all have fascinating backgrounds, which are in most part kept hidden from the reader.
Although the demons do create chaotic situations for their human keepers to create suspense and drive the plot forward, Nat’s friends could have had more depth if the reader knew their full stories. “Demonkeeper” and its sequels is a good fit for middle-grade readers who love urban fantasy and….did anybody hear that door creak?
Royce Buckingham answered a few questions for Page Views about his work:
Page Views: When did you first realize you wanted to write fantasy novels?
Royce Buckingham: I was traumatized by Jaws and Alien on the big screen as a kid. As I grew older, I learned that things that invoked strong emotion were artistically inspiring. Love. Rebellion. Despair. Heartbreak. For me, unfortunately, the strong emotion from my youth was abject terror. So now I write monster stories.
Add to the mix that I was also an old school Dungeons and Dragons nerd in the 70’s. I think the idea that I could create my own stories started with creating my own monstrous adventures in the medieval world of D&D.
PV: Demons are usually depicted as evil beings in religious works and popular culture. How did you come up with the idea to make them not good or evil, but personifications of chaos?
RB: Great question! “Demonkeeper”was inspired by a street kid I used to prosecute in juvenile court. I imagined the chaos of the streets as a monster that would eat him up, as it does with so many lost children. The generalized theory that demons are born of chaos grew from there.
I purposefully stayed away from “devils” and any religious connotations.Ironically, and sadly (for me), my care was for naught. At its peak of sales in the U.S., “Demonkeeper” was considered for the Scholastic Book Fair circuit, which would have taken the novel’s exposure up to the next level.
But Scholastic, in its wisdom, felt the word “Demon” in the title was not appropriate for schools (Demons = evil = bad = devils = Satan = some parent complaining without reading the book). So the title alone eliminated about a zillion fans (and an entire income stream). Whoosh, right out the window.
Of course, now Scholastic Book Fairs carry The Hunger Games, where kids massacre each other. But hey…it’s a crazy, senseless semi-art industry, and barely missing the big score is part of the fun, right? (insert boo-hooing here).
PV: Did stories of witches and witch burnings inform your narrative of the Demonkeepers’ backgrounds, particularly the hostility they usually encounter when people learn they handle demons?
RB: I haven’t really gone the persecution route. I mention it as a historical obstacle for early Demonkeepers, but I haven’t given it much page time in the contemporary setting. But I should! Great idea! The history certainly informs the narrative in the sense that it keeps our Keepers quite secretive about their profession.
PV: Ritchie is as important a character as Nat, yet the reader doesn’t really find out his back story. Did you want to focus more on Nat as a protagonist than on Nat and Ritchie as a team?
RB: I am mostly Nat-centric in “Demonkeeper” (and “Demoneater”/ “Demonocity”), but I did give Ritchie his own character arc to play with. I am experimenting and trying to figure out how many points of view makes a good story. Although, now that I’m reading Game of Thrones, I figure as many as you want is fine, so long as you can wrangle them.PV: Do Sandy’s parents, who don’t appear in the stories, ever wonder why she’s always gone for long periods of time when she’s helping Nat capture demons?
RB: Nice spot. That’s a kid-world device. Kid characters are often allowed to wander unsupervised in fiction, and I take advantage of that conceit. They probably wonder, but like the monotone parents in classic Charlie Brown, they probably don’t interfere.
PV: Movies often associate demons with possession and exorcisms. In Nat’s world, would a demon possession be possible? How would a Demonkeeper exorcise demons from a person?
RB: Sure. Chaos consumes The Thin Man in “Demonkeeper,” so he’s an example of exactly this concept. Order is the enemy of chaos. Introducing order into the life of a child (or adult) that is consumed by chaos can save them from going down that road to a destructive place. Note that not all chaos is bad in a person’s life (a little craziness makes life interesting), but too much can kill.
PV: The city of Seattle is the setting for most of the action in the “Demonkeeper” series. Have you lived in Seattle your whole life?
RB: I have lived in Seattle at times, but I grew up in eastern Washington by a nuclear plant, where my ghost story novel “The Dead Boys” is set. Currently, I am about an hour and a half north of Seattle and go into the city as often as possible for a busy father of two boys.
PV: If you were a Demonkeeper, where would you most like to travel to find demons?
RB: I love the ancient demons, so Germany, England and old Europe. If I knew more about the Far East, I’d go there. If I was on the job, I’d look in war-torn countries where they have the most chaos.
PV: Some demonic manifestations are things like lamps or pieces of furniture. Since demons have been around at least as long as humans, would “household” demons appear as more period appropriate objects over time?
RB: Absolutely. The demonic butter churn is a good example. Who knows what sort of havoc that could wreak! The original flying broom was a demon, and the keeper seen wrangling it was unfairly deemed a witch and burned, drowned, or both.
PV: Will there be more “Demonkeeper” books to come? Any chance of a prequel about previous Demonkeepers?
RB: “Demoneater” and “Demonocity” are now out on Kindle. I believe they are $1 and $4, so they are a great bargain. I wrote some prequel material for “Demoneater,” but it didn’t make it into the final version. The trilogy is complete at this time, but I’d be open to writing a full prequel novel in the DK series.
PV: Are you working on any other stories outside of the “Demonkeeper” series?
RB: Good golly, yes! I have my YA thriller “The Terminals” with St. Martin’s Press coming out in 2013 or 2014. I’m also writing an adult legal thriller for St. Martin’s. And I have finished a 500 page medieval fantasy “Mapper” for Random House in Germany that will be out in summer of 2013 in Germany. Can’t wait to find a buyer for “Mapper” stateside and share it will all of my fans here at home!
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