Purists beware: Prosper’s Demon, by K. J. Parker, is not a tale of good versus evil. This is mostly a tale of not-as-bad and maybe-worse fighting it out, ostensibly for a greater purpose, but maybe just in a never-ending cycle of retribution. But as a world champion player of Petty Petty Princess, I can say …

Like the immanently forthcoming Prosper’s Demon, My Beautiful Life is a pure K.J. Parker novella. It’s snarky and cynical, fascinated and repelled by power in equal measure. Bad men doing bad things for arguably decent reasons. And in My Beautiful Life, the narrator isn’t even that bad! Sure, he accidentally puts out his brother’s eye …