Prosper’s Demon was not an enjoyable reading experience. The story follows an unnamed morally grey exorcist. He discovers the genius philosopher, engineer and artist Prosper of Schanz is possessed by a particularly wily demon and the story unfolds from there.

Reading this book felt like listening to a scratched CD. K. J. Parker’s style in this novella was jumpy and skipped from place to place with no indication of where the story was going. Convoluted sentences structured in confusing ways were common and I often had to reread lines to fully understand what he was saying.

I also found it hard to connect to the narrator because Parker obfuscated his motivations and thought process in a way that made it impossible for me to care about him in any way. The story jumped from flashback to present timeline in a way that gave me narrative whiplash and while the story ultimately made sense by the time all the pieces fit together and our narrator’s plot revealed the story had already lost me. So while there was some interesting worldbuilding and I can see Parker’s style working for some this book just didn’t hit the mark for me.