Romance, academia, and Filipino deities dial up the intensity inYA paranormal fantasy
A demon has possessed an 18-year-old girl and believes the hard part is over–only to discover college can be hell–in this thrilling YA fantasy continuation of The Girl inspired by Filipino mythology and gods.
About the book: After finally possessing the Girl’s body, the Demon is ready to execute the carefully laid plans by her former master, Death. But with no memories of the plan and only a few vague memories of a deal with Filipino warrior LapuLapu, the Demon faces punishment in the form of mortality, leaving her imprisoned in the former Girl’s university life: freshman year at UC Berkeley. Can a demon have an identity crisis?
“What do you want?” the demon said, screeching at Hazel’s face. “Go back and be with your other countrymen, those who deem you part of the islands.”
“But they aren’t. They’ve got it wrong. They’re just as American as you are; they don’t see that they should be called American Filipino.”
“Stop!” the demon said with a growl, holding one hand up in front of her face.
The air prickled with electricity as Hazel appeared frozen in place, unable to move.
If you are going to continue this incessant need to belittle what I am, I will make sure the rest of your stay is short and very painful. I don’t care what you call them or yourself. You’re fighting to be at the top of a pile of shit. There was no ‘Philippines’ before Spain arrived and named these islands after a fat man on an old chair. The only thing that united the people on that island is the foreign flag that demolished everything before it. Whatever language or power or knowledge your people had, they have long shattered and destroyed it. I don’t want or need to prove myself to you or any of those suckers in that room trying to have pride in a hellhole. Welcome to the actual world, where everyone is just clawing their way through the shit around them. Save your philosophical debates for someone who cares to fight over the trash pile that’s left behind.
Stop, Death’s voice whispered through the trees. I can feel your rage from here...calm down.
The demon looked back at her roommate, still frozen in place, the sweat dripping down her face coming in droplets of blood, not water. Her eyes, wide in fear, shaking like the veins in her forehead, blue and angry, vibrated from the demon’s rage.
You’ll kill this child if you continue. You agreed you’d follow my orders and take this test drive of humanity a little slower before exercising your powers again, he said, hissing in her mind.
The demon lowered her hand slowly, the vision of a different hand, one with nails like claws, waved in front of her face, reaching toward her neck. She shook her head, scolding herself for losing her temper so quickly, before snapping her fingers and turning away from her roommate. Hazel stood in the garden, alone, looking unsure of how she got there.
“Hey, wait up; let’s go back to the room. I don’t really want to hang out with that group anymore,” Hazel said, yelling in the distance to the demon.
The demon was almost across the street, ready to turn the corner onto the ramp of their building.
If the people have forgotten us so quickly, if they wish to fight for the colo- nizers’ scraps, I have no wish to take up any place in their cause, to fight for them any longer.
Maybe it’s time to set sights on a new home. A new island. A new identity.
An Interview with
Victory Witherkeigh
This is the companion chapter to your award-winning first novel, The Girl. What are some of the challenges you faced when writing this second half?
Writing The Demon was a more significant and structured challenge than my initial experience writing The Girl during NaNoWriMo. It is very different tackling writing a novel with set deadlines for drafts and having review sessions for the manuscript. When writing my first novel, I could pace myself and show it to others only when I felt ready. Therefore, tackling this novel with set deadlines for drafts and having review sessions for the manuscript introduced me to an entirely new experience of following more structured writing schedules and making adjustments to the manuscript based on feedback.
The Demon explores more of the Filipino mythology. How did you incorporate more of that into the story?
Since I knew this novel would have a much more direct viewpoint from The Demon, I had to prepare for writing this novel by doing as much research into the deities and mythology I heard as a child. While I love the stories I heard as a kid, I knew that time and my memories of the tales could drastically differ from what modern researchers have discovered with new translations or discoveries. As an adult, conducting a thorough analysis of the deities and their origins made it easier for me to create rich backstories for the other characters, including specific details about their appearances and the specializations of Death’s generals.
One of the underlying themes to this book is facing your inner demons. Why was it important to include that in your story?
So many coming-of-age stories end just as the character is graduating high school and going off to college. I often feel that the actual nitty-gritty growth occurs at this point because we usually don’t even confront our inner demons in their proper form until we’re on our own for the first time as legal adults. I wanted to include this struggle because it’s a universal battle we all have at one point or another. It’s often a harrowing journey because you slowly realize that getting what you think you want is not the solace it once was. I wanted to show that one’s mental health journey is valid. There will come a time when mental health and its discussion aren’t so terrifying or lonely; we are not alone in struggling with some of these darker emotional discussions.
The biggest challenge the Demon confronts in this book is freshman year of college. How do you think your readers will relate?
When I realized I was working on a series, one idea that struck me was looking at the other side of the coin in the coming-of-age stories. For many readers, many stories talk about high school and graduating with this idea of the main character getting into their dream school and achieving perfection. But that’s often where the “coming of age” story ends, which seems so silly when there’s research now that a person’s brain doesn’t fully develop until age 25.
That being said, I think readers can relate to the challenges of what teens believe their first year as legal adults will be like and the reality of what ends up happening. The saying, “Be careful what you wish for because it may come true,” is very much alive and a theme of The Demon.
Another major theme of this book is the legacy of colonization left in The Philippines. What was your intention in sharing that history with your readers?
The legacy of colonization is so messy and complicated to unpack. Still, I wanted to include the discovery of those ramifications because I felt it’s an essential part of growing up - being able to challenge the worldviews of one’s parents or ancestors and decide one’s own opinion. As children, history often comes from only one source or one viewpoint, and it can be jarring to realize the inherent biases that trickle into our lives. I hoped that by showcasing a character realizing their view of the world shifted and discovering the good and bad elements in the legacy of their homelands’ colonization, readers could identify their struggles in that journey.
What part of The Demon was the most fun to write?
This question is always tricky to answer without giving away too much, but I enjoyed developing the background story of The Demon’s origins. I hope readers have as much fun piecing that journey together as I did.
What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?
Mangkukulum, because of his domain ruling over the lava fields of Kasanaan, found when he visits the mortal plane that his favorite meal is Asian spicy noodles of all varieties finished off with plain vanilla ice cream.
Victory Witherkeigh was longlisted for the CIBA Ozma Award and a bronze winner at the 2023 Spring the Bookfest Awards. Now she continues to explore Filipina/Pacific Islander heritage by combining pre-colonial myths of gods and demons, the history of colonization in the Philippines, and all-too-relatable experiences of entering college to create an absorbing modern fantasy that first-generation American teens in particular will see themselves in.
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