Creatures of Will and Temper

Creatures of Will and Temper is a novel by the American writer Molly Tanzer, published in 2017. It is set in Victorian London and is a reworking of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with duellists, demons and a hidden world beneath the ordinary one.

Evadne Gray cares nothing for fashion, parties or the social arrangements her family expects of her; what she cares about is fencing, and in particular the master she has admired from a distance. When she is sent to London to keep an eye on her sister Dorina, who has ambitions as an art critic, she intends to do her duty and get on with her own training.

Dorina is quickly taken up by Lady Henrietta Wotton, a semi-respectable aristocrat who turns out to be in thrall to a demon with an appetite for beauty and pleasure. Evadne, meanwhile, joins the fencing school she wanted and finds that its master has dedicated his life to eradicating demons and the people who serve them. He wants her help, and as she becomes more involved she begins to suspect that Lady Henry is a diabolist, and that her own sister may have joined her.