Prosper’s Demon by K. J. Parker – Book Review

This review was originally posted over at booknest.eu!

Published by: Macmillan-Tor/Forge
Genre: Fantasy, Historical, Dark
Pages: 112 (according to Goodreads)
Format: Novella, e-book
Review Copy:  Provided by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Release Date: January 28^th, 2020

At long last, I’ve gotten my hands on a work by K. J. Parker, an author very well regarded in the wider fantasy community. Judging by the quality of Prosper’s Demon, I have to wonder – what the hell took me so long?

Written in the first person, this novella tells of the trials and tribulations of an unnamed exorcist in a world very like our own during the early Renaissance. Our protagonist is not a nice guy. He is devious, cunning and unscrupulous, a man who shows no qualms when it comes to inflicting pain to his fellow human beings. A vile man, written excellently and with an undercurrent of gallows humour that colours everything in the world around him – this worked very well for me.

The world this exorcist inhabits is one filled with cruelty, pain and Them, an awful lot of Them, demons who possess humans and seem capable of inducing in them extreme states – these creatures can only be seen by a chosen few born with the ability to recognize them, and this ability is as much a gift as a curse…as the protagonist will prove to you, reader.

You have to learn to think like Them, they told me when I was just starting out in the business; only, don’t get too good at it. They say that to all the students, and none of us really understand what it means at the time. In and out of each other’s heads, like neighbors in a small, friendly village, which is exactly what we aren’t. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t do to get too familiar.

The reason Prosper’s Demon won me over, though, has to do with it not being your average exorcist/demon game of cat and mouse. Rather, it’s the structure of the story, the fact that a lot of it is built around conversations between the protagonist and the eponymous Prosper, a Leonardo da Vinci-esque genius of unparalleled scientific intellect. A lot is done right in those dialogues, obfuscating the truth, confusing the reader and making the outcome of the story questionable at all times.

Some of it, too, has to do with bronzeworking and the casting of statues – and I was struck by how well researched these sections were, by the veracity of complex processes as they were described.

If, like me, you’ve never before read the work of K. J. Parker, Prosper’s Demon is an excellent place to start, short but none the poorer in ideas for it. My score? 5/5!

Oh, and the cover? Gorgeous, sets up just the right tone for this strange tale.