A Bloody, Philosophical Extravaganza

A Review of Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Prosper’s Demon begins with a murder, a murder that is very easily overlooked once the dark, twisting tale actually starts to wind its way down to Hell. A murder that, in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t so bad, is it?

Our unnamed narrator is, for lack of a better term (and I really mean that), an exorcist. His (and I only use He/Him here because, similar to our narrator’s demon, “this one particular, unique, individual specimen was definitely, in my mind, a He.”) job is to remove immortal, evil, entities from people when they’ve found a home inside of one. The process is brutal, bloody, and painful for both the entity and the human, making many of the encounters with these entities a zero sum game. However, it’s a game our narrator has been playing since he was very young and, luckily, he’s very good at it.

This novella is equal parts witty and gritty and takes you down dark, and even darker still, philosophical paths until you’re questioning who’s really in the right. Our narrator isn’t a “good” person, he makes that abundantly clear. Then again, he’s not an evil person either. He’s simply the person with the skills necessary for the job and the one that just happens to be around at the time to do it.

When our narrator encounters one of these evil entities hidden inside one of the brightest minds of the century, Prosper of Schanz, he is faced with a dilemma. To remove the demon would surely end the man’s life, thus ending a life of pure genius. However, allowing the demon to stay means playing alongside that which he has vowed, and come to, hate. Like I said, it’s usually a zero sum game.

The gory, blood-splattered, bone-splintering ending was, really, both a complete surprise and completely inevitable. What surprised me the most was that I still ended the novella rooting for our unscrupulous narrator. He’s going to die eventually, but damn is he going to raise Hell in the meantime.

Thank you to Tor.com publishing and NetGalley for providing me with free access to the digital version of this book prior to its publication.

Prosper’s Demon will be available for purchase on Tuesday, January 28!

{This review will be published to my blog on January 15, 2020 and can be found at that time at www.csreads.home.blog along with a corresponding Instagram post @citronella_seance}

A book with an intriguing concept which I feel would benefit more from being a fully fleshed out novel. The protagonist was a likeable 'devil' and his nemeses' both had intriguing personalities. I would definitely like to explore this world more.

ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

<i>Prosper's Demon</i> is a strange, compelling little tale. Told from the POV of a cleric/ demon hunter (though not in the Winchester way) the reader is taken on a journey through a world like ours or a historical version of ours, but different. Demons exist alongside humans but they are unseen and intangible to all but those with particular aptitude. Demon nature seems to be to cause mischief and harm which they do via possession. The clerical order dedicated to casting them out is hardly about peace and light either - a lot of harm is often done in the 'eviction' process. Our MC has a longstanding animosity with a particular demon and what follows is a sort of cops and robbers journey where the demon, often desperately trying to escape the MC, is pursued by the man he made an eternal enemy of.

It's dark in many ways, but the tone is light. This is a fun read with a tongue in cheek poke at goodness versus evil, and life versus art thrown in. The narrator introduces himself by saying that the reader won't like him. This isn't strictly true. We're not meant to like him because his moral compass is skewed and his actions are often reprehensible, but he is a very compelling character. If you have to like your MC or they need to be 'good' this may not be for you. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it.

Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's a lot of great stuff going on in this novella.

My first, I believe reasonable, reaction was one of, "Hey! This is like Bujold's Penric's Demon!"

But very quickly, it went down the rabbit hole, scaring away every mouse, drenching itself in blood, and proving that art really IS mightier than the sword.

I like. A lot.

I doesn't end there. It doesn't even begin there. What I got during the reading was a treatment of the prisoner's dilemma wrapped around a despoiled world much like our own and set in a boiling vat of Enlightenment-era intrigue, authoritarian bullies, and the delightful introduction of widespread institutionalized demon possession.

Nice, right?
So, yeah, I want MORE. A lot more. Novels worth. GIVE ME MORE! :)

I ended up reading this in the space of an evening, which is one of my favorite things about the Tor.com novellas. The premise is that a morally ambiguous exorcist a la John Constantine runs into his old demonic enemy, who’s taken root in the infant son of a local prince. The prince has a tutor, supposedly one of the brightest men of his age, who is also demonically possessed. So now, what’s our dude to do? Throw in a touch of world building and a bit of personal history and you have a quick, fun read. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking material, and it’s a bit trope heavy, but sometimes you need some good old fashioned junk food reading. If you’re looking for a darkly humorous read with a side of moral dilemma and some fun side diversions into casting bronzes, definitely check this out when it comes out.

A solid novella, however the writing style didn't engage me as well as I wanted it to. I actually enjoyed the perspective from a demon hunter fighting other demons as well as his own. The opening scene definitely sets the tone for the rest of the book. The idea for this novella is brilliant and I'd be interested in reading more from this author.

Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker, a short novella that literally invites you to hate it. We learn of a demon hunter that takes demons out of humans but success is in the eye of the beholder.

Another magnificent novella from the master of the form

[... Synopsis ...]

I love K.J. Parker’s short fiction. In addition to his excellent prose, the author is able to pack in so much into his short stories and novellas: they are humorous, subversive, and peppered with historical allusions. Prosper’s Demon is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I have an idea you aren’t going to like me very much. That may prove to be the only thing we’ll have in common, so let’s make the most of it.

As with many of Parker’s novellas, his protagonist in Prosper’s Demon is a version of an anti-hero. He makes mistakes, he harbours prejudices and biases. He’s not afraid of voicing them. He’s only mildly ashamed of the awful things he’s done. He excuses his actions because the ends justify the means. I’m not sure he can count as “unreliable”, when he seems so ready to share his bad behaviour.

In this fantasy world, demonic possession is real. The medieval tendency to blame all maladies and mental illnesses (not to mention inconvenient character flaws) on demonic possession is real in this world. There are, however, people born with the ability to not only see these demons but also exorcise them. Unfortunately for the demon and host, the process of extraction can be excruciating and extremely dangerous for the host (the demons, though, cannot die). The narrator explains his profession, as well as how his abilities developed — in addition to the ways in which he mishandled past experiences and extractions.

Parker quickly establishes the rules of this world, and where and how his protagonist fits. We learn of an ongoing grudge between the protagonist and a particular demon, and this leads the story to the royal palace and the offices of a man named Prosper: genius, inventor, adviser to the rulers. And, as mentioned in the synopsis: possessed. What is an exorcist to do? I won’t say anymore, because that would spoil the fantastic second half of the novella, which builds to a rather shocking ending.

Partly, he said, he enjoyed my company; it wasn’t often that he had a chance to talk to someone whose mind was so little cluttered with education or accepted opinions— (“You mean I’m stupid.” “Good heavens, no. Just ignorant.”)

Prosper’s Demon is an engaging, often very funny novella about possession, ambition, the value of art, and ingenuity. The characters are fantastic and fascinating. I loved this. Very highly recommended.

I love that cover! A dark,funny as Hell look at demon possession. I don't know about you, but I LOVE characters who are morally-grey, and it's especially is fun to read about the unnamed-narrator being a complete and unrepentant a**hole. I loved it!

Purists beware: <em>Prosper's Demon</em>, by K. J. Parker, is not a tale of good versus evil. This is mostly a tale of not-as-bad and maybe-worse fighting it out, ostensibly for a greater purpose, but maybe just in a never-ending cycle of retribution. But as a world champion player of Petty Petty Princess, I can say that this is a feature, not a bug. Our nameless narrator wants to get rid of demons, and one demon in particular. He’ll avoid collateral damage if he can, but if he can’t…well. It might not make for a moral story, but it makes for an interesting one.

A quirk of birth and not a life of holiness left the unnamed narrator with the ability to expel
demons from human hosts, a task he finds grimly satisfying. The demons can’t
hurt him and they can only resist him to a certain extent, so he’s had a
successful career. And if that career is littered with the bodies of those he
couldn’t save in time…well, the church has always placed a higher value on
expelling demons than on the lives those demons want to steal. If a number of
people died in the course of his exorcisms, that still counts as a win. But his
most recent case might end in his first L. How can he fight his old nemesis,
currently ensconced in the body of a young prince, and also fight a strange new
demon, who inhabits the body of the smartest man in the world?

This is indelibly K. J. Parker, by which I mean, it's dryly funny, there's a deep dive on a skilled profession (exorcism this time, and as ever, some engineering), some too-smart-for-their-own-good characters, and always, always some scheme that doesn't fall into place until the last page. I'm not always a big fan of twists, but Parker is a goddamn gymnast: when he sticks that landing, you can't help but want to cheer.

It's always a bit easier to land twists in short fiction, since you really only have space for
one great idea. It's why I had mixed feelings on his Engineer trilogy (too many
reversals eventually undercut the characters and the emotional weight—just like
<em>Game of Thrones</em>), but loved <em>Purple and Black</em> and <em>Blue and Gold</em>.
Those were novellas from the "dark days," when big publishers hadn't
embraced ebooks and only small presses would take chances on shorter-form
fiction (and the prices went up accordingly). Thank you, Tor.com, for changing
all that.

But I digress. <em>Prosper's Demon</em>, which is a perfectly modest and self-contained 112 pages, does indeed set us up for only one twist. It's British in the way that the Freeman and Cumberbatch <em>Sherlock</em> is British: dry, self-deprecating, and so fast-moving that you can miss things if you're not paying attention. But that’s part of the fun: what’s a red herring, and what’s a critical piece of information? I won’t spoil it, but I will say that I completely did not expect the direction it took, especially that twist.

Is the twist <em>good</em>? Yes, it's unexpected and it's perfectly in keeping with the narrator's character. Is it <em>satisfying?</em> Well, that depends. If you agree with the narrator's philosophy that demons are the greatest evil, then sure. If you're not on board, the whole thing reads like the memoirs of an obsession, a cautionary tale rather than a triumphal one. It feels a bit hollow. But maybe that hollowness is part of the point, too. Our narrator tells us that "…only two things live forever, the instruments of darkness and works of genius." It’s a lonely, empty world, only briefly illuminated by triumphs of art or science, and otherwise beset by demons that can literally never die. Life is a struggle, and living on your own terms—free of demons, or free of human judgments—is even more so. But in his unusual ending, Parker suggests that the struggle—which is ugly, and finite—might have its own merits. And regardless of how the narrator leaves you feeling, that’s a pretty good place for the book to land.

Prosper's Demon comes out January 28.