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The Caves of Buda

The Caves of Buda is about a trio of individuals fighting to save the world from a demon, but first they have to free themselves from their own demons. Laci is an old man who encountered the demon Bélusz as a teenager during World War II in his native Hungary. Bélusz is an earth demon, who had been bound to the caves around Budapest by the Romans, but who has been gathering wizards and binding them to his service to find the plaques that bind him and destroy them. He attempts to bind Laci, but Laci manages to bind them demon to himself, thus earning himself some decades of freedom, during which he flees the Communists in Hungary and raises a daughter in America.

Zita is his granddaughter, a young woman stuck in an unfulfilling relationship with a man who depends on her to take the initiative for everything. She cares deeply for her grandfather, who is showing signs of senility, and doesn't believe Laci when he says he was attacked by demons and must return to Budapest to finish the job he started with Bélusz.

Ephraim is a young Jewish man who is laid off from his tech job. Himself divorced from a woman who fought for all sorts of political causes, he's a slave to his habits and superstitions, and he decides to break out of his habits by travelling to Budapest to see the caves. Naturally, he hooks up with Zita and Laci in their quest.

Nominally a fantasy, The Caves of Buda is mostly character-driven, with the destruction of Bélusz being merely the motivation of their travel to Budapest. Unfortunately, I was not especially interested in the characters. Laci was mostly grappling with his feelings of past failures (and his feelings never really feel like they get resolved, to me). Zita's relationship problems feel too distant, a little too artificial, and I didn't find her a very likable character. Ephraim was better than these two and his own story arc felt more fully-realized, but he seemed like a less important character than the other two.

The story arcs felt truncated, as well, as the story rather abruptly ends after the demon situation is resolved, and we don't even have a chapter or two of our heroes returning to their lives and going about setting into their new orbits.

Also, the story felt like it could have been about, oh, the Hungarian Mafia or something rather than a demon. The fantasy elements felt largely superfluous to the story, and what was there felt pretty by-the-numbers. There's lip service paid to Bélusz threatening the end of mankind, but the gravity of the threat is never really presented.

Overall I was pretty disappointed in The Caves of Buda. Although fairly well-written, it wasn't a story I was enthusiastic about reading, and many elements just didn't work for me.