Fallible Fiend [Paperback]

Decamp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1992

Ordered to spend a year's servitude on the human plane, Zdim the demon, a mild-mannered scholar of logic and philosophy, becomes the city of Ir's last chance when a barbarian armada threatens to attack. Reprint.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Baen (June 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671721283
• ISBN-13: 978-0671721282
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,930,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Set in Novaria, February 17, 2001

By 

Joe (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fallible Fiend (Novaria, Bk. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

de Camp uses his common fantasy setting of Novaria for this book, and throws a typical plot twist by having a demon as the central character. Mind you, a demon in this sense is simply a being from another dimension, and Zdim happens to be a mild mannered, scholarly sort of being who (for instance) tries to trade off on his boyhood freindship with the magistrate to avoid the summons to serve on the human plane in exchange for iron. Zdim just wants to stay home, bite his wife, raise rabbages and help hatch the kidlings.

But he is denied a wavier and whence the adventure begins.

de Camp's one central grace for me is he writes about people. His villians will look at you and say, "Me, a villian? But you, dear sir, are far more a villian!" And they mean it, spouting viewpoints which are (in the villian's sense) perfectly logical (if not exactly moral). Culture clash is often the center of his stories. Take a demon skilled in logic and reason and throw him in with barbaric humans and you wind up with non stop exasperation and amazement at the duplicity involved. As Zdim points out, 'feindishly clever' is quiet a strange racial tag for the incessantly cunning and devious humans to come up with!

"I endeavor to give satisfaction," is perhaps the exasperated catch phrase of the de Camp books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Typical DeCamp -- Who ever said all Demons are bad people, July 30, 2000

By 

Robert Ketchum - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fallible Fiend (Novaria, Bk. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

After many years searching for a copy of this work, I finally came accross one a few months back. It is classic DeCamp. Who else would use a Fiend or Demon as the protagonist is a story and pull it off. How did he accomplish this you might ask? Simple, he does a wonderful job rationalizing its actions by creating a social structure in which it conforms to. By doing this he has created a Demon the reading can relate to. So when our hero is forced into enslavement in the human plane (which is much more caotic than his own) the comedic floodgates are open. As in most of DeCamp's works the humor mixed with great storytelling is unsurpassed. I recommend this work (if you can find it) to anyone who is in need for a little escapism which does not attempt to take itself too seriously.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Just Fun., November 29, 2004

By 

W. Zeranski (Moscow, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fallible Fiend (Paperback)

Whether it's SF or Fantasy, writing humorously is when de Camp is at his best. De Camp's use of language isn't what readers are use to anymore. He demands his readers' attention which isn't a bad thing at all. The language along with that `clash of cultures' theme helps bring out the humor.

Zdim is a demon, conjured by a wizard, into a world where he just doesn't want to be. He's also a lousy indentured servant. He thinks-too literally-for his own good. And throughout the story he never quite gets the hang of humans or the Primal Plane (or rather the 12th plan being that he knows he's from the Primal Plane). Of course, one misadventure leads to another.

The book is a short and fast read. That never goes wrong.