Books › Practical Demonkeeping
Practical Demonkeeping
A Comedy of Horrors
First published 1992 · 312 pages
A chaotic, laugh-out-loud romp through a quirky coastal town besieged by a very hungry, very inconvenient monster.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stumbling into a late-night supernatural sitcom where the stakes are high but the punchlines are higher. The pace is brisk and bouncy, pulling you through a chaotic web of small-town eccentricities and demonic mishaps with an irreverent, wry smirk. It balances lightly gruesome horror tropes with an overwhelmingly absurd and quirky mood, making even the darkest moments feel like a slapstick routine. The prose is snappy, favoring sharp dialogue and deadpan observations over dense world-building. It is a perfect fit for readers who delight in the bizarre, finding comfort in stories where flawed, deeply weird characters must band together to survive a supernatural mess of their own making.
- Mood
- chaotic
- quirky
- eccentric
- lightly gruesome
- Tone
- irreverent
- wry
- absurdist
- satirical
- darkly comedic
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- unlikely companionships · small-town eccentricity · the burden of immortality · supernatural mishaps
- The writing
- The prose is snappy and dialogue-driven, balancing deadpan observations with vivid, grotesque comedic imagery.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from weary, chaotic resignation to a surprisingly heartwarming, slapstick-fueled resolution.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love their supernatural horror heavily diluted with slapstick comedy, quirky townspeople, and witty banter will devour this.
Content notes
- comic violence
- demonic cannibalism
- sexual humor
- substance use
About the book
In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor facade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.
Description from Open Library.
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