If you make a deal with the Devil, don’t forget to read the fine print.
Three operatives find themselves on the run after a corporate sabotage job goes awry. Now, their predatory employer, a heavyweight weapons-tech firm, wants its elite A-team dead at all costs.
Jon is a smooth-talking charmer. Friedrich is a hacker prodigy. And Guion is the ice-cold tactician who keeps them all in line. Backs against the wall, the men strike separate infernal pacts to stay alive. They vanish into the urban badlands of New York’s Five Hives, vowing to lie low and figure out why they’ve become targets. Meanwhile, Jon suspects there’s an insidious evil possessing his friends, and he wonders if they all got more than they bargained for.
Amid an escalating war between local gangs and the firm’s private shock troops, the fugitives uncover a conspiracy that threatens to destroy everyone they know and love. But can they stop the destruction before their inner demons seize control?
Book Review:
Deals with the devil are rarely clean—but Daemones ex Machina by Russell Anders takes that danger and cranks it up to full-throttle cyberpunk chaos.
Set in a gritty, dystopian New York carved into corporate-run "Hives," this story follows three rogue operatives—Jon, Friedrich, and Guion—on the run after a mission gone sideways. With a mega-corp hunting them down and literal demons in the mix, survival comes at a hellish cost. What hooked me was how each character’s infernal pact slowly warps not just their bodies, but their loyalties, their sanity, and their souls.
The worldbuilding is top-notch—imagine a corporate apocalypse where tech, temptation, and the occult blur beyond recognition. Anders doesn’t shy away from big themes either: power, autonomy, and the commodification of humanity are all explored through a dark, action-packed lens.
If you love high-stakes thrillers with supernatural grit and gritty tech, Daemones ex Machina is one wild, addictive ride.
