The Devil You Know

By: K. J. Parker

Narrated by: Will Damron

Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

The greatest philosopher of all time is offering to sell his soul to the devil. All he wants is 20 more years to complete his life's work. After that he really doesn't care. But the assistant demon assigned to the case has his suspicions, because the philosopher is Saloninus, the greatest philosopher, yes, but also the greatest liar, trickster, and cheat the world has yet known - the sort of man even the Father of Lies can't trust. He's almost certainly up to something...but what?

©2016 K. J. Parker (P)2016 Macmillan Audio

Our Mortality How Will You React

This is a great story that's just as good as the Last Witness. Although they have nothing in common expect for being really good can't wait for another. There is 1 word that can discribe what the book is about but that 1 word would spoil the story so I leave to you to make it out what that 1 word is. This is a minor thing but an FYI sometimes the author wrote from different view points of view so paying attention if all of a sudden it becomes confusing a bit. Definitely replay value here.

Slight Spoiler Question Kind Of Thing To Think About After You Are Done.

1. One thing though I don't know if you can answer is why this man chose this representative.
2. How did he know his name to ask for him, also on the cover it says father of lies , we all know that Satan has that honor but from the memories of himself we can see he more like a minion of Hell that Satan himself.

Good story limited by voice actor

K.J Parker’s “The Devil You Know”, is a novella that asking how could one twist a contract to sell their soul for their own benefit. The story offers an intriguing twist, although based on medieval pseudoscience. The problem with this edition of the audiobook is the reader, Will Damon, performs with a single voice. Since the story has no obvious transitions, such as “joe said” or the “devil stated”, there’s no way to tell when the story is transitioning between two characters, so whenever there was a transition it was several sentences before it became obvious which character was speaking. Otherwise a decent story.

Narration fail

Narrator’s voice does not clearly portray the two first person POV characters. WTF?! Gave up halfway through. Will read it instead.
Should have used two different voice actors!

Just one problem

Clever story. And the narration was smooth. My only problem was that the two main characters sounded identical and it made it difficult at times to track correctly who was speaking.

Good story, bad reader

The reader kept flipping voices making it confusing as to who was talking.

He would use the same voice for the devil as he would use for the philosopher and vice versa, so at time I wasn't sure who was talking at all

I thought the narrator was fine

As I am not five years old any longer, I do not require someone to do funny voices while reading a story. I didn't think it was that difficult to keep the characters straight! But if that's a dealbreaker for you, then no, the narrator does not do funny voices.

The story is excellent. It is very clever and witty. But you do sort of have to pay attention.

Story=Great Narrator=Terrible

This is a case of a 5 * story and a 2* narrator. A mismatch. The story is sort of like an updated version of The Screwtape Letters. And very well written. Premise is great. Pacing, plot, etc. are engaging. Characters have depth. An enjoyable read. Read being the key word. Not an enjoyable Listen. Because the narrator is sorely lacking and brings the story down.
The narrator does a good job of giving the different characters distinct voices that are easy to distinguish. But when the demon finishes speaking the narrator uses the demon's voice to say "he said" or "I said", or "I surprised him" as if the demon is narrating the story, when it's actually the old man narrating the story, then he switches to the old man's voice. The result is confusion. It took me a while to figure out who was surprised and who was narrating the story. I had to pay careful attention or I'd end up confused. It seemed as though the narrator had not read the story before doing his job. A little preparation and attention to detail would have avoided this and made it a 4* or 5* story.

3.5 stars

This is an interesting story that feels like a short parable. There is nothing too terribly in depth and was a good story to have on in the background while building a puzzle with the wife. Weirdly, the narration kept jumping perspectives (first and third person) often in the same sentence and between characters, making it very difficult to follow who was talking. The narrator also kept to just one voice for all characters, making the story difficult to track. Overall, the story premise was interesting and worth sticking around to the end, but not worth listening to again with the editing issues mentioned above and one voice narration.