Demon Apocalypse, by Darren Shan
Shan, Darren (2007 [2008, US]). Demon Apocalyspe (Book 6 in the Demonata series). NY: Hachette (Little, Brown). 200 pages.
The first two sentences of Darren Shan's sixth book in the "Demonata" series pretty much exemplify the entire installment: "A demon shaped like a giant scorpion digs its stinger into a woman's eyes. As they pop, it spits eggs into the bloody sockets, then watches with its almost human face as the eggs hatch and wriggling maggots feast on her flesh" (2007/2008, p. 3). Yes! This scorpion creature thankfully makes a few more appearances in the story and, lucky for us, performs that little maggot-hatching trick more than once. Some folks might judge Shan's latest series to be gratuitously violent, but I think it's totally hysterical.
Those who have been following the "Demonata" know that the series revolves around the mythic war between humans and demons, each of whom live in alternate worlds. While demons seem to live in a variety of created non-human worlds, the latest demon plot involves sneaking into the human realm and taking over. Enter Grubbs Grady, the primary hero of the series, who has become embroiled in the counter-plot to stop the demons, led by the evil demonmaster Lord Loss. I have to admit, I hadn't read book 5, so I was a little lost at first when I entered book 6; however, the primary conflict here follows much of what anyone who's read more than one of the previous novels understands as one of the series' main struggles: namely, the "good" guys want to stop the "bad" guys from opening a gate between Lord Loss's demon world and the human one.
Interestingly, though this book seems to conclude and resolve some major issues, Shan has indicated (via his website) that this is not the end of the series, but the beginning of what he considered the series' major plotline. At any rate, Demon Apocalypse delivers much of what we've come to expect from the series' installments: the sixth book sets up the battle to be fought in this episode and describes it and its results in grisly detail.
As I mentioned earlier, I think some folks might consider the series to be overly gory; however, I think that it is this aspect of the series that really distinguishes it in a rather hysterical way. For one, the creative descriptions of the demons and their attack patterns (e.g. the scorpion dude) are actually so over-the-top as to be morbidly funny. There were so many passages that could be read as either horror or lampoon and that, to me, is one of the attractions of the books. That Shan includes this level of detail (and really, the book's aren't that descriptive in terms of pain and suffering, just in terms of action) shows, in my opinion, a level of respect for readers that you don't often see in a middle-grade horror novel. Yes, there is a lot of what some might call violence, but I don't really consider "violent," per se. It's more like gross-out description that titillates in the same way that violence in standard (adult) horror novels does, but that excuses its readers from really suffering along with the fictional victims. At any rate, I think the series is hilarious, and I have no doubt that others find it so as well.