2022/41: The Devil You Know -- K J Parker

[tamaranth]

2022/41: The Devil You Know -- K J Parker

Those awesomely strong monarchs of the deep had brains the size of walnuts. And so it is, as far as I can tell, with the gods. All power and no intellect. Strength makes you stupid. It’s the weak who grow smart. [p. 111]

A sequel, of sorts, to Blue and Gold: Saloninus, the philosopher-protagonist of that earlier work, makes a deal with a demon. Twenty years of restored youth, invulnerability to accident, and a demonic servant to obey his every whim: and, yes, straight to hell at the end of the contract. This contract has been drawn up by demonic bureaucrats (is there another sort, I hear you cry) and is guaranteed loophole-free. But Saloninus, the alchemist, is good at changing things beyond recognition.

The story is told in alternating first-person narratives, Saloninus and his unnamed demonic liaison. One ends up rather liking the latter, with his (its?) appreciation of human art, enjoyment of tea, and growing conviction that Saloninus has something up his sleeve. Saloninus himself is a thoroughly unreliable narrator, prone to recounting an incident -- for example, the death of his wife -- and later explaining that appearances might have been deceptive and something completely different occurred. As, indeed, seems to have been the case with that contract.

The Devil You Know (second book with this title that I've read recently!) is vastly entertaining, darkly amusing and pleasingly complicated, a riff on the Faust legend with a protagonist who's cleverer and more cunning than Faustus. An excellent reminder of how much I enjoy (most of) Parker's fiction.