My Review: This story was a fascinating choice for the next story in the long-running Penric and Desdemona series because it takes place, not after the previous book, The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, but before it. Way before it, in fact. So far before it that most of the characters in Ox aren’t even on Penric’s horizon in…

My Review: To begin at the beginning, the idea that the ox might - or might not - be demonic doesn’t mean the same thing that it would in our world. In the World of the Five Gods, it means that the poor, confused ox might be possessed by a demonic spirit that is literally on its way up in the world, possessing larger and larger - and in the case of an ox, MUCH, MUCH larger - animals with more brainpower on its way to becoming a full-fledged demon in the service of the Fifth God, the Lord Bastard, the “master of all disasters out of season.”