Prosper's Demon - Outside of a Dog

paperback, 104 pages

Published Jan. 28, 2020 by Tor.com.

ISBN:: 9781250260512

(1 review)

In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium.

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out — he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

1 edition

mikerickson@bookwyrm.social reviewed Prosper's Demon by Parker

Review of "Prosper's Demon" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Normally I'd consider it a red flag when a character speaks directly to the reader in first person and says, "You're probably not going to like me." It screams of edginess for its own sake and I feel like I need to settle in for something that's going to try so hard to be jarring and surprising that it fails to do so. And yet, that happens here, and I still managed to be surprised (in a good way!).

Fantasy novellas tend to be sparse, but this has got to be a record for describing the bare minimum of the worldbuilding, if there's even a way to measure that metric. But maybe because I was given the bare minimum to understand what was going on I wanted to know more. Hell, three of the main characters weren't even named and I was still hooked on their dynamics and interactions. But …

Normally I'd consider it a red flag when a character speaks directly to the reader in first person and says, "You're probably not going to like me." It screams of edginess for its own sake and I feel like I need to settle in for something that's going to try so hard to be jarring and surprising that it fails to do so. And yet, that happens here, and I still managed to be surprised (in a good way!).

Fantasy novellas tend to be sparse, but this has got to be a record for describing the bare minimum of the worldbuilding, if there's even a way to measure that metric. But maybe because I was given the bare minimum to understand what was going on I wanted to know more. Hell, three of the main characters weren't even named and I was still hooked on their dynamics and interactions. But I was able to read between the lines and get a sense of the logic this setting operated under and understood that there was a lot of underlying history that we simply did not have time to learn about.

I feel like I just read a ghost of an outline of a story, and it was still so good that I'm not mad about it. I guess gun-to-my-head if I had to describe what kind of archetype it was I'd call it a heist even though nothing was stolen and the protagonist didn't fail? Don't worry about it, it's a quirky little book with a lot of heart and you can knock this one off in a day; give it a go if you're looking for a short read.