The Mark of the Demons
by John Jakes
In honor of the recent passing of John Jakes, I offer this review of a less well-known work. Well, less well-known to people outside the genre, I suppose. I have wanted for some time to read his Brak the Barbarian, and in a dark synchronicity The Mark of the Demons came in the mail the same day I read of his death.
Yes, Jakes wrote The North and the South. I have fond childhood memories of watching the TV miniseries with my mother. I know he also penned the historical saga of the Kent family, but Brak is a little more in my wheelhouse.
From such humble acorns do mighty oaks grow, and as acorns go, this is a damn strong start. The Mark of the Demons is not even the first Brak book. This was a semi-random choice that I bid upon along with five or six other books up for auction online, but the first Brak story wasn’t available. It didn’t matter. I jumped in and was up to speed in little to no time.
There was slightly more continuity referenced than a comparable, randomly selected Conan tale. When Conan’s history is referenced, it is often to things you never see in any of the other tales either, window dressing meant to create a sense of history or establish something about the character. You get the sense that The Mark of the Demons is part of something larger. Even so, the prose is smooth and lean, the narrative tight as a drum, and the action is often brutal.
While crossing a dangerous desert during the season of the skulwind, Brak saves Ky and Kya from reptilian bird-like creatures. Fraternal twins, the brother and sister are half-starved and strangely subdued. Luckily, the trio link up with a merchant caravan. From there things are basically a desert version of the voyage of the Demeter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Most readers easily understand the problem well before Brak does, but it doesn’t lessen the story in any way. The Mark of the Demons isn’t about solving the mystery of who is draining the blood and bone from the people of the caravan. It is about a force of evil waxing ever stronger, how long the protagonists can endure, the traitors that deliver them into the hands of that evil, and who will ultimately survive.
Brak might be slow-witted enough that you are screaming at him to just start hacking away with his sword while he is still trying to be absolutely certain of what is going on, but he is also thick-headed enough to not know when he should just lay down and die. The blonde warrior takes his share of licks in this thing. It’s a rare occasion when one of these classic, he-man barbarian heroes (Brak, Conan, Kyrik, Thongor, or whoever you like) takes such sustained, prolonged punishment over the course of an adventure.
By the end of the book, Brak was still standing through a combination of desperation and sheer adrenaline. When reading, if you think “how does he keep going?’ it can either break the suspension of disbelief or it can be because you are really into the story. For me, it was the latter. By the time the city was on fire, Brak and a mysterious warrior with gems for eyes fighting back to back against a horde of ghouls, I was hooked.
Conan is still king, but Brak deserves to at least be a baron in the hierarchy of barbarian heroes. I’ll have to track down the other books in his saga. If they are all as good as The Mark of the Demons, I have some pleasant afternoons of reading ahead of me.