Customer Reviews

The Fallible Fiend (Novaria, Bk. 3)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The Fallible Fiend (1973) by L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000) is a modestly entertaining fantasy set in the land of Novaria. Readers of de Camp's "The Reluctant King" trilogy: "The Goblin Tower" (1968), "The Clocks of Iraz" (1971) and "The Unbeheaded King" (1983) or his last Novaria book "The Honorable Barbarian" (1989) will be farmiliar with the landscape, place names and the humorous - tongue-in-cheek tone of the story.

Zdim, a demon from the Twelfth Plane is indentured to a wizard in Novaria. Zdim is highly intelligent and follows his instruction to the very letter - a commendable attribute that nonetheless entangles him in a bewildered confrontation among the contrary city-states of Novaria.

Frankly this reader found the story line somewhat contrived and the plot overly drawn out. Also missing was some of the sharp and witty dialog that made "The Reluctant King" trilogy a favorite of mine.

For those who may be interested a shortened version of this book was serialized in the bi-monthly magazine Fantastic in the December 1972 and February 1973 issues.

A picaresque adventure, starring a demon summoned by a wizard. While called a demon, the main character and first-person narrator is more like an alien than a demon, having few of the attributes we traditionally mean to invoke by using the word "demon;" in fact, the demon is more decent, honest and intelligent than the human beings in the story. In fact, the book, in addition to being a sort of light-hearted sword and sorcery adventure, is a satire of human greed, aggression, racism, etc. The satire is not particularly funny, nor is it very eye-opening (haven't we all heard that war is bad, greed is bad, racism is bad, etc., by now?) but the jokes are not so bad, nor the social commentary so preachy, that it is distracting or off-putting. A brisk pleasant read, neither anything special, nor a waste of time.

I read the 1973 Signet mass market paperback, with the blue-green cover and the ad for Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer on the back.

1) I'm starting to be convinced that "humor" based stories aren't my bag. I got bored with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I got equally tired of the humor here.
2) The language is like old King James with thee's and thou's...which made the reading a bit cumbersome.
3) I did like the idea of the demon being the main protagonist and how he deals with each strange situation is entertaining and did keep me reading through the story.
4) Good commentary on humanity and society.
5) It is a short, quick read even considering the language used was slowing me down.
6) Not a bad read but definitely not what I was hoping for as my first book by De Camp.