- Mass Market Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Del Rey (12 April 1981)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345293673
- ISBN-13: 978-0345293671
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.4 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,185,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice fantasy story from the point of view of a demon,
By
This review is from: The Fallible Fiend (Paperback)
This is a nice book in Sprague de Camp's inimitable style. Take the classic situation of a wizard summoning a demon - but from the demon's point of view. The eponymous fiend tries hard to make sense of a human world through a series of adventures and the readers' sympathies are with him all the way.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews) 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Set in Novaria,
By Joe - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: THE FALLIBLE FIEND (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,
By Robert Ketchum - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: THE FALLIBLE FIEND (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.,
By W. Zeranski - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The 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. |
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
