2016 short fantasy novel in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as
Chalion). Some years after the previous books, Penric and the demon
Desdemona have been sent on a diplomatic mission, to recruit a
disaffected general for Penric's home of Adria. So first he's accused
of spying and thrown into a dungeon…
That's something he and Des can deal with, given time. The
ripples that his arrest have had on other people, such as the general
he'd come to recruit, and that general's widowed sister, will take
longer to die down; but Pen being Pen, he's going to do whatever he
can to fix the damage even if he wasn't the proximate cause of it.
Not that he really minds, particularly once he's met said widowed
sister. Even if both she and her brother reckon Penric is clearly mad.
There's distrust on all sides, a spy who's good at what he does but
less good at thinking outside the box, and a confrontation with
another sorcerer. There's lovely writing, as always from Bujold ("fled
at an amble"), and two people using the character voice that she's
always used a bit but has recently refined (in this series and in
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen): the woman slightly older than
expected for a heroine, who's seen all that, who's fed up with macho
nonsense, and who just wants to get on with things without anybody
else getting chopped into bits thank you very much.
The main problem with this book is that, having barely breached the
40,000 word limit that makes it a novel rather than a novella, it
ends, not quite in the middle of the action but certainly with nothing
resolved. It may be that the platform on which Bujold is publishing
this series has length limits; there doesn't seem to be a good reason
to break the story here.
Followed by Mira's Last Dance.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.