Imagine going to your middle school Scholastic Book Fair, picking up an intriguing fantasy title and thumbing through to find “fuck” sprinkled throughout.
If that prospect delights your inner (or outer) 6th-grade persona, then A.E. Kincaid’s The Demon, the Hero, and the City of Seven (2021, Phantom House Press) is for you. This debut novel is a breezy romp and the first entry in the Mal & Reg Novels of Widdershins. The book follows a middling demon and a subpar hero who have been bound together through a combination of dryad magic and a paperwork error.
Kincaid — an Iowa-based fantasy author — writes this book from the perspective of the demon, Malgon Belroth Kirranith, “Fifteenth of His Name, Giver of Papercuts, Collapser of Souffles and Inventor of the Humblebrag.” Traveling with him is Sir Reginald P. Asstradle, who seems more concerned with his left-at-home pup (Bitsy Wigglebottom) than actual heroics.
Though cursing and some sexual themes make this a book you’d probably avoid handing to an actual sixth grader, it otherwise does read like the kind of title I’d become absolutely obsessed with in middle school, just aimed at older readers. Most of the chapters could stand on their own as being short, fun, high concept adventures and the whole thing is written in a humorous tone that owes something to Douglas Adams.
Similarly, I would be shocked to discover that Reg and Mal’s dynamic didn’t owe anything to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens. I would immediately recommend this book to anyone who was a fan of Aziraphale and Crowley’s interactions.
My only real issue with the book is it doesn’t feel like it starts in the right place. While the paperwork error Reg made with his hero form is what summoned his demonic companion, we don’t see this first encounter. Perhaps more puzzling, we never see the oft spoken of interaction with the dryads that resulted in the duo being magically bound to close physical proximity with one another.
Kincaid seems to have a companion work titled When the Demon Met the Hero, presumably recounting the very beginning of Mal and Reg’s adventure. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely clear to me how to access When the Demon Met the Hero as I haven’t been able to spot it on the Barnes & Noble or Kindle storefronts. (It is on Kincaid’s timeline but is, perhaps, a yet-to-be-released title.)
Rocky as the first few chapters were, The City of Seven won me over in about 50 pages. Though not a novel dynamic, I came to love Reg and Mals interactions, how they rubbed off on one another and I fully intend to pick up the second entry.
The third novel in Kincaid’s Mal & Reg series — The Demon, the Hero, and the War for Widdershins — is set to release this November. An ebook novella in the Widdershins Universe following two ancillary characters from The City of Seven titled Where Saffron and Goodfallow Went was also released in late August.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s October 2023 issue.