2024 short fantasy novel in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as
Chalion). A girl washes up in a fishing village, and promptly sets
things on fire. Penric is sent to deal with it.
Well, that's the plot: a girl too young for conventional magical
training has nonetheless picked up a demon. So will the Bastard's
Saint cast out the demon? Will the girl go back to the trader family
that threw her overboard when she started to set the ship on fire?
Once the demon is given a name, things become more fraught, and even
more when it seems that Pen's own demon Desdemona feels positively
towards it…
But what we also get here is a great deal of Penric's domestic life in
a household with wife, mother-in-law and children. Bujold is not the
sort of writer to do a plain day-in-the-life, but we get the
information anyway, interspersed with Penric's attempts to explain
sorcery to the young Otta in a way she can understand. (And since
she's been brought up Quadrene, i.e. all demons are Evil and the
Bastard is the worst of them all, there's a long way to go.)
Unusually for Bujold one could start the series here and pick up on
what's going on without too much trouble—but the emotional weight
would be missing, the feeling of satisfaction in Pen's domestic
tranquility by contrast with what we've been through with him earlier
in his career.
Very fine, in short. And another one is out already…