Reading roundup: Penric edition, and fannish odds and ends
What I should have been doing the last 3 days or so: working on my PE nomination package which is due this Friday at 5 p.m.
What I have been doing:
1) catching up on Penric & Desdemona
2) writing up my thoughts about the six Penric books I'd read in the last several weeks
3) writing my Yuletide letter
4) browsing the newly released Yuletide tagset
No regrets, tbh, but I may feel differently come Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday night...
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A couple of weeks ago I had been trying to think of what I might want to request for Yuletide, given the bounty that I got last year (♥!) and my general lack of consuming new fiction since around the time Yuletide requests closed last year, and wasn't sure I had three things I wanted to ask for, but then I was browsing the nominations spreadshet and saw sholio's Chalion-verse nom and was like, OH YEAH, I meant to catch up on Penric and specifically the characters introduced in Penric's Mission, after falling off the wagon after Mira's Last Dance in 2018. So I did.
I wrote these up as I read them, so each contains spoilers for itself (and potentially earlier entries in the series), but not for subsequent books.
14. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos -- This picks up not too long after Mira's Last Dance, with Penric, Nikys, and Adelis established in the court of Duke Jurgo of Orbas, Adelis with some victories behind his belt as a general for this new power, Nikys as a lady-in-waiting to the Duke's young daughter, and Penric being useful in learned divine/sorcerer ways -- but with the courtship between Penric and Nikys unresolved. This is the book that resolves that courtship, and that was the part of the whole thing that was least interesting to me, alas.
Because while I like Penric, and I like Nikyis fine, their feelings about each other are the least interesting things about them to me, and I find the relationship itself -- like, the shippiness of them, the vibe between them -- to be entirely devoid of whatever it is that makes couples interesting to me. I guess, while there is some conflict, it's not interesting conflict? And Nikys's reluctance about getting together with Penric is plausible, I guess, between Desdemona being part of the relationshp inevitably and being traumatized by losing one husband already (and Penric did botch broaching the whole thing in the previous book), but I also don't find them compelling to read about... (maybe it's one of those things I'll understand later, like I did with Komarr, but I kind of hope not). But, anyway, the longer the story spent on Pen/Nikys, the less into the relationship I got, and the more time one of them spent mooning about the other, the less I enjoyed being in that POV, which, by the end, I think made me like both characters less than when I started. Oops. Fortunately, I liked them quite a lot when I started and so still liked them by the end.
Other than the Penric/Nikys, though, I really enjoyed this story! And there's plenty of story beyond the courtship, to be fair. Spoilers from here I really liked everything we saw of the Xarre household, especially albino assassin-eunuch Bosha (who, coming on the heels of She Who Became the Sun, was SO REFRESHING with his lack of drama and high tragedy XD Like, I mean, there's drama and high tragedy in his life, but he ignores it and just goes about doing the necessary. So nice!), but really everyone and the relationships between everyone. Tanar (the subject of Adelis's suspended courtship) is really fun, with her multifaceted pursuits. I really liked her relationship with Bosha and their backstory (although I didn't really buy that Bosha would share it with Penric et al during a random carriage ride; he doesn't see the type given to confiding in others), and I liked the relationship between Tanar and her mother Lady Xarre, too -- it's pretty unusual to see a strong-willed daughter and mother getting along, but clearly they've worked out a very stable, pragmatic system between themselves, and it was nice to see. I'm really looking forward to seeing Adelis interact with this whole household, and especially to see what his relationship with Bosha is like. (And, to my earlier point, the brief interlude at the Xarre household made me more interested in any number of ships -- Tanar/Bosha, Adelis/Tanar/Bosha, Tanar/Nikys, Penric/Bosha even -- than Pen/Nikys XD)
I also enjoyed the actual prisoner heist, which was very fun (I mean, we already know LMB does good heists), and it was great to meet Nikys's mother Idrene, which was expected based on the premise and which I was really looking forward to. And it was ALSO neat to meet Nikys's other brother (the out-of-wedlock child of Idrene and her young army officer lover who was killed before they could get married), whose existence I had completely forgotten about, and even when he was mentioned again in this book, I had not been expecting him to show up, at least not in such an active role! Anyway, Ikos was great; I was impressed with his engineering contraption and amused by Penric's (and especially Desdemona's) extreme DO NOT WANT at being confronted with it -- and I love that Idrene's reaction to the story is REGRET that she didn't get to try out the contraption! There is some additional very nice family stuff for the Idrene-Florina-old General Arisaydia-Adelis-and-Nikys family unit, which especially convinces me that I'd love to know more about Idrene and Florina's relationship; it is so clear they loved each other a lot, but also there's the great bit where Idrene talks about how she had to be the strong, practical one, essentially, despite being the junior wife.
Oh, randomly, I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I was getting strong Mont St Michel vibes from Limnos, and the "hostile needlework" of the historical tapestry made me think of Bayeux (which is not the same place as Mont St Michel, but close enough that I wonder if those connotations are intentional).
Quotes:
re: hiding Penric's Temple braids in his medical case: "If it ever came to the valise being violently turned out, it was likely the assailant would be discovering Pen's abilities in more direct ways."
Des asking about Idrene: "Is she very level-headed in emergencies?"
Nikys: "Well, she raised Adelis and me."
Nikys: "Adelis is not the sort o who inspires poisoning. He's the sort of man who inspires hitting on the head with a skillet."
Penric muffled a too-agreeing snort. [...] "Have you ever done so?"
"Not since we were twelve, I admit. [...] Then he grew too tall to reach."
At the fountain, where Nikys has her visitation by the Daughter: "Des was crying, too. Pen was surrounded, inside and out, by crying women. It was appalling."
"A man with a grappling hook and a death wish might make something of that [climbing out the window], but he had brought neither." (Well, fortunately than Ikos shows up with a souped up version of the former.)
Nikys, after Bosha was complaining that Tanar might run off to become a pirate queen: "Do pirate queens keep secretaries?"
Bosha: "I dread finding out."
So definitely a book I liked a lot on the whole (despite the near-total lack of Adelis, except in flashbacks and conversation). And also a book I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. to finish, which doesn't happen to me much and is a testament to how well it hit.
15. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Orphans of Raspay -- this one, conversely, was (relatively) a bit of a slog for me, for a Bujold book -- by which I mean that it went down very easy whenever I was reading it, but once I put it down, it wasn't drawing me back the way the other books in this stretch did. It took me a while to figure out why, and I think mostly it's the "fucking ships" effect ("fucking ships" is what I started calling it some years ago, after two series I'd been enjoying a lot in book 1 -- Inda and the Gentlemen Bastards -- suddenly veered onto ships with book 2 and suddenly I was having way less fun. Ships are apparently an anti-kink of mine, as far as settings go XD). But also, this is the first book in a while that Penric is on his own (for most of it) -- except for Desdemona, obviously -- in terms of returning characters, that is. He had the girls, but I never did learn to tell them apart, and I'm still not totally clear what this interlude was for, in terms of Pen's character arc.
Spoilers I thought at first that he and Nikys were going to end up adopting the girls, but was much happier with the real outcome, which is that their father showed up, turned out to be a good and loving father whose life was nevertheless too complicated to take the girls with him, and they worked out a non-shmoopy solution that seemed to make everyone happy. But the "reset" with the girls not ending up in Penric's care long-term was even more puzzling from an arc perspective... was all that just to give Penric a taste of parenthood? but, like, I didn't think he needed to learn anything from that experience, so *shrug* I guess it does mark the first time in several books that Penric has to deal with ordinary people, without the protection of his rank/patronage himself, but, like, "Borders of Infinity" this isn't... I guess it is interesting to learn that a prostitute was either a great soul worthy of the Bastard's bargaining or an outright saint, and it's neat how her daughters have no inkling of this, so it comes as a surprise to the reader as well.
Outside of that, I guess there was some fun in reading through Penric's carefully laid plans all falling apart as the rescued prisoners bailed on him and the crew of the long-searched boat betrayed them, until he finally just started burning shit down. And of course there's the great moment when Adelis turns up with the cavalry navy, ostensibly to rescue Penric but actually Penric's pretty well rescued himself. And the anti-ransom XD But actually the little moment of cordial, shared bloody-mindedness between Adelis and Desdemona was my favorite thing in the book. I also enjoyed the revelation that Idrene "seemed to take Des as a crony, which had led to some very odd conversations of a sort Pen was sure few husbands were privy to."
Oh, and there's a bunch of theological stuff, too, I guess, between Quintarians and Quadrenes, but while I find the framework of the Five Gods really neat, and like all the trappings, the sacred animals, who falls under the jurisdiction of which god, the gestures, the theology I'm really not interested in, so that was largely lost on me.
And while I'm noting down random stuff, this was also the book in which I got really tired of people he met admiring / commenting on Penrics, good looks, eyes, hair, etc. It makes sense because nobody knows who he is, so his looks are what people are going on, but it got old real quick, and made him sound like a Mary Sue.
Randomly but on a more positive note, I enjoyed Penric's continued dismay at the dried fish blocks people were eating and offering to him, which he continues to refuse to recognize as food. (I say this as someone who actually really likes dried fish/taranka!)
Quotes:
"The stagecraft was unnecessary for lighting the fire, except perhaps under Godino."
16. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Physicians of Vilnoc -- this one was really good, but I'm also very glad I have not been reading these Penric books as they came out, because this one was released in May 2000, and that would NOT have been a good time to read a book about a plague, doctors running themselves ragged trying to save people with insufficient resources, etc.
I do tend to like "genre does medical thriller/mystery" stories a lot, and this one worked well for me. Spoilers And it was not easy, but good to see Penric not at his loweste point, which we only get to hear about from a point of reflection, his confession to Rede and Desdemona's warnings, but to see how tough it gets when he is nowhere near that nadir but heading off in the same direction, if that makes any sense -- only seeing the worst cases, and trying to fill any gap that opens up in his time with more work, remembering the losses and not the successes.
We don't get to see much of the established characters in this, except Penric himself (although Adelis's interplay with Des continues to be wonderful), but I liked Dubro and his Maska a lot (Maska is such a Good Boy! but seriously, it's really cute to have a demon who was a dog last, and the different kind of relationship that is from Penric's mentorship from Desdemona or someone just coming in possession of a wild animal demon), and I liked Rede (giving himself rat flea bites FOR SCIENCE), and I deifnitely DID NOT see coming Penric matchmaking the two of them towards a demon betrothal/bequest/apprenticeship. I was also amused by Penric's dismay that his patients (soldiers and Rusylli) seemed to listen and trust more the less experience Dubro, who looks grandfatherly and is a veteran himself, than they do Penric's authority. Oh, and while Adelis was pretty scarce in this despite the action taking place in his fort, I did really enjoy his ruse with getting Penric the opportunity to slaughter the larger animals without freaking out the soldiers -- that was clever! (saying it made the meat taste better and insisting the animals killed that way be reserved for the officers' mess).
Not surprised that by the epilogue Penric and Nikys have advanced to having a kid, and was touched that they named her after Adelis's mother and that Idrene appeared the most touched by this. And I'm equally aww that Penric is hoping to name their second child Llewyn, after the princess-archdivine :'(
Quotes:
The Rusylli: "These eastern Temple-men are bookish fellows, aren't they?" "That doesn't make them any less witless. Just more nearsighted."
re: the past suicide attempt: "His life in Orbas, his new family, held more hostages against him now, blocking that form of flight."
17. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Assassins of Thasalon -- This was a really fun read, and I can see why it grew to (short) novel size rather than a novella like the others, because there was a lot of fun plot to cover. SPOILERS!
I really enjoyed the, like, police procedural aspects of this book, with demon as disposable murder weapon -- which I guess you can get away with for a while until The Bastard takes notice. I was not expecting it to end, essentially, in a courtroom drama, not with assassins all over the place and a civil war in the wings, but LMB seems to delight in setting up situations where Adelis arrives and has nothing to do because Penric's already taken care of everything (or, OK, in this case it was Penric and Blessed Iroki).
I liked Alixtra, both as a person and as an illustration of yet another way to stumble into being a sorcerer, and was glad that she and her weasel demon got a reprieve -- and that she ended up giving the demon the name they would have called a child, had she given birth to a daughter rather than a son, and reporting on Arra's progress as one would with an infant -- her darksight came in! she said her first word! (Alixtra and Penric bonding over comparing childhood language acquisition was very cute, and I was amused to learn that Rina's first word was "Kitty!")
The part I was looking forward to the most, since it was pretty clear from the title that Penric was going to Thasalon, was seeing the Xarre household again, and they did not disappoint. I did NOT guess that Tanar was the person who had poisoned Methani (to give Adelis the best advantage), but it's a very Bujoldean heroine thing to do, and I definitely approve -- and I also loved the way Bosha reacted once he figured it out, which didn't take him long at all. (It was also interesting to come across Penric's musings towards the end that maybe the reason the Bastard wanted Alixtra to come back to Thasalon was to inspire Tanar to the action she took. Although Tanar does not strike me as a person who requires a lot of external inspiration.) I like both Tanar and Bosha a lot, and the relationship between them; I'm actually perfectly happy for Tanar to prioritize her responsibility to Bosha over Adelis. And I find it cute that Des approves of her but especially that Des feels it is up to her to judge her fit for marrying Adelis or not. Tanar and Bosha apparently hit some kind of fealty kink sweet spot for me, like, right on the money, so I was invested in them from the start, and even more so in this book when Bosha got to bear up stoically under torture to protect Tanar. Just, sometimes LMB writes things that are very relevant to my id, is what I'm saying.
I was, of course, hoping for more Adelis; I did not think it would take until 90% into the book for him to show up again, or that the action would be all wrapped up by then XD I enjoyed what we got of him at the start, the way he handles Gria and the offer (with full transparency, and leaning towards staying in Orbas until the last assassination attempt pisses him off), the cute moments with Desdemona and with his niece, and then the little bit we got at the end, the understated reunion with Tanar, the endorsement of Bosha feeling like he can let someone else protect Tanar (at least physically) because he is slowing down. Too bad we didn't get to see more of the household interacting after Adelis's arrival, but I was amused at the thought of Bosha being essentially Tanar's maid of honor at the wedding, and Penric sort of having to be best man, as the only family there. I am, however, disappointed that Adelis is staying on in Cedonia, since it must mean even less of him appearing in the Penric books, and probably less reason to look in on the Xarre ladies and Bosha, too, since presumably this means the relations between Cedonia and Orbas will be normalized.
Blessed Iroki was interesting, even though I don't particularly care about him or the theology angle in general. I mean, LMB's saints in this 'verse are not very conventionally saintly, we saw that with Ista as far back as Paladin, but this country bumpkin version who doesn't know fancy temple words and just wants to be left alone to fish was pretty cute, and especially cute was how excited he got about seeing whales. Oh, and I thought it was very cute that ke refers to Desdemona as "Miss Big Demon" XD
Other cute things: Penric having actually tried out and gotten to work the sorcerously induced narcolepsy that he was thinking about in the last book, which he is now (cautiously) willing to try on humans, and which everyone calls "that weird thing you do to those poor rats", and him thinking of it first and foremost for medical applications (anaesthesia). Penric using playing with Kittio as an excuse to try out pulling (as well as riding in) a wicker cart. Rina as a toddler, with her "attendant cat", and her interaction with Adelis, which was adorable. I'm definitely with Nikys, though, on not approving of Penric using shamanic geas to make a baby go to sleep; it's relatable to WANT to, but it doesn't seem like it would be good for the baby...
Quotes:
Penric and Adelis saying good-bye as Adelis is heading off to Thasalon: Adelis gripped Pen's arm in the gesture of military brotherhood. [...] "Don't waste my work," Pen murmured. Adelis touched the burn scars by his eyes and smiled grimly. "I'll try not.""
"The man was embezzling demons?"
"Pen wasn't sure but that the Five celebrated death as gladly as birth, conjoined aspects of the uneding immigration of souls into Their realm. [...] Finished or unfinished might matter to Them, though, whether souls arrived in Their arms healthy and splendid, or miscarried or stillborn or crippled or mutilated by their truncated gestations in the world of matter."
"He still had no idea whether all this prudence was unneeded, sufficient, or too late."
"Really, murmured De, Tronio is like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions" [about Tronio bringing magistrates, guards, and a petty saint of the Father to arrest Penric, which turns into his own arrest]
18. Lois McMaster Bujold, Knot of Shadows -- a return to a "smaller" murder mystery, and this one was creepy and sad in a number of ways, but not really what I wanted out of a Penric book. The death magic/miracle worldbuilding implications are interesting, but at this point I'm much more into the found family aspects of the Penric & Desdemona books than the demon-assisted uncanny mystery solving, or the theology. The other thing is, I found the wins in this one particularly bleak.
Like, the main successes of the story are, what -- SPOILERS for everything -- finding the body of a four-year-old and ensuring that his soul is claimed by the Son of Autumn rather than sundered, and that his family gets closure -- which, yes, are important, but still very sad. And I guess the Bastard's justice, though that is only observed, with the falsely accused clerk presumably being vindicated in the future, after investigation, which is also pretty hollow, considering his and his mother's suicide. And then, I guess, Penric figuring out, at the end, why death magic works for some supplicants and not other, and that -- if I understood that correctly, I wasn't sure I was fully following -- it is also a way to save the supplicant soul from self-sundering in despair? So in a way it's a discovery that Vissa, or at least Vissa's soul, had a kind of rescue, too -- but that's a "happy ending" that relies on theological nuance that really doesn't do much for me, so doesn't feel like any sort of happy ending to me. There isn't even the satisfaction of figuring out the embezzler's/accusers motivations, which might have at least been satisfying on a mystery level; figuring out how the body came to be wearing a threadbare nightshirt and appearing to have died by drowning doesn't really substitute for it.
The mystery is neat, the worldbuilding is nicely creepy -- it was a fitting book to be reading as Halloween season kicked off -- and I was happy to see Alixtra and Arra coming along, and Penric still bopping them on the head for praise (that's a very cute detail), and I was happy to see Penric and Nikys have their second kid now and did indeed name him Llewyn, but I feel like I would've preferred the plot of this novella to be the B plot, or even the A plot, of a longer book where some actual happy things happened too.
19. Lois McMaster Bujold, Masquerade in Lodi -- this is an older one, both in terms of publication date (October 2020) and especially in terms of series chronology (before Penric's Mission), so I left it for last, since I knew it wouldn't have any of the characters I wanted to see more of (the Arisaydia siblings whom Penric only meets in 'Mission' and everyone he comes to know because of them). I'm mostly trying to read the series in internal chronology order, but of course it was not possible with this one, since I had already read 'Mission' before this was written. But actually I'm glad I read it after 'Physicians' (as it was written), because it's reassuring to be reading it from a vantage point where I know Penric comes to be at peace, more or less, about sorcerous healing, but in this book, right after his experience at Martenbridge, he is still getting over the trauma. It's not prominent or anything, but he is still very much getting over it, and grieving his mother and the princess-archidvine in a way that's visible to the saint, and kind of avoiding people (not that it helps him much), and, just, I was glad to know he's got a better life waiting for him just around the corner as I was reading this.
I enjoyed the story, another "smaller" mystery, strife among individuals rather than countries, and people Penric only deals with in passing. Spoilers! It was neat to get a look at a "mad" demon, and I was especially intrigued by it having spent some time in dolphins -- who apparently not only grieve but also speak, if that's what possessed!Ree's unintelligible squeaks were? I was also glad, after the very melancholy Knot of Shadows, that Penric and Chio got to rescue an actual living person and return him to his family, and there was a joyful reunion; I'm really glad it wasn't 'Knot' that I read last. I have no strong feelings about any characters introduced in this, but they were nice to spend time with. With Chio, it was interesting to see a very differnt saint than Blessed Iroki, and I was especially amused that her guardian couldn't tell when she was really being guided by her god and when she was just being a willful teenage girl and using the Bastard as a handy excuse. I had actually quite liked Merin when he was first introduced, but it pretty quickly became clear that he was not the caring friend looking for his cabin mate who had miraculously survived (it actually took Penric rather a long time to catch onto this, but I guess he was pretty busy with other things). Anyway, I do think it's neat the way Merin's real motivations are foreshadowed with the easy way he lies to Ree's sisters, ostensibly to keep them calm, and his grumbling about this fortune -- LMB does good antagonists! But it was too bad that he turned out to be a bad guy, I thought. I do find it interesting that it was Ree's uncle recommending Merin to one of his bitter rivals when he discovered the man to be thieving -- instead of trying to prosecute him (which would have been difficult) inadvertently led to this situation where Ree and Merin were on the same ship and Ree didn't know not to trust him.
On a random note, Lodi feels very Venice-like, which was neat, because I've actually been to Venice, so could more readily imagine the surroundings and Penric et al wandering between the bridges and canals.
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I forgot to include it in my last Taskmaster-related post, but simply must share: scytale has fallen down the TM rabbit hole and is currently watching series 4, which is one of my personal favorites, and has posited a crime show/mystery/detectives/police procedural AU for the Taskmaster series 4 gang, which I just had to share with y'all. Excerpts below the cut for posterity, because the two of us elaborating on this idea is springkled across a bunch of long comments:
scytale: Between the first comparison to serial killers and Mel and Hugh's trailer, I have spent far too long casting everyone in a crime show/AU. Joe and Lolly are the detectives! Noel is in the ensemble but not directly on the case (tech? mortician? with outfits, obviously), and Mel as a journalist looking for a scoop (she never wants to write about cake again). Hugh is the charming, brilliant criminal who is ultimately foiled by his own hubris (the nonchalant smugness whenever he gets questioned probably did not help either). Also, he talks about facts about clouds and clocks, and it would all tie to the show's nihilistic themes about human nature except the show isn't serious or bleak enough to have those.
me: OMG, brilliant! Of course Hugh is the criminal mastermind brought down by hubris, and yes to the motif of clocks and clouds <333 I love the idea of Joe and Lolly as junior detectives (Greg is the grumpy superindendent/police chief with a hidden heart of gold and Alex is his put-upon secretary, Y/Y?), and Noel makes perfect sense as someone in a vaguely techy role that allows him to be weird and flamboyant -- medical examiner, maybe? I do feel like something death-adjacent would fit his vibe.
For Mel, journalist fed up with fluff pieces makes a lot of sense, but I was also thinking just now that she'd make a great cozy amateur detective. Like, her day job is, IDK, running a guinea pig farm, or something equally quirky, but she is always getting involved in people's lives because she just can't help herself, and she is so charming and friendly that everyone talks to her, even when they shouldn't.
scytale: Come to think of it, I think they both [clocks and clouds] feel like a reflection of how analytic [Hugh] is in the tasks! And of course can be applied to his criminal masterinding. :D
You're right -- Joe and Lolly should definitely be junior detectives! YYYYYY to Greg as the superintendent police chief lounging behind a desk, and Alex as the put-upon secretary (and water cooler gossip wonders what's really going on there)!
Greg can even keep the youth jokes (what is this emoji, Lolly).
And yes, medical examiner [for Noel]! :D Death adjacent is great, and I feel like there should be a running joke of him doing offhand experiments (the cake in the washing machine! but more forensics-like?).
Oooh, I like cozy amateur detective [for Mel], and the guinea pig farm is genius especially if we get to see the guinea pigs. (Please let us see this prize-winning boar).
Also, she should definitely get to ride a train at least once.
me: (Also, detective AU!Joe can keep his habit of kissing the Taskmaster's superintendent's portrait.)
And nobody would be able to tell when [Noel] is doing Real Science and when he is just being odd.
It would be a travesty if [Mel didn't get to ride a train]! In fact, if we're talking TV show, then I bet the credits for Mel feature her having a really grand time riding a special train. (Hugh is looking at a clock. Or possibly a cloud.)
scytale: YES. And by extension, Greg should definitely have a very fancy portrait as a superintendent! As superintendents do!
These credits sound so plausible, omg. :D I'm imagining one of those very artsy credits with lots of fancy cuts and polish.
(The best part is, this all still sounds the normal amount of weird for Taskmaster, and the characters translate so well to quirky crime drama people.)
This now joins the list of Oddly Specific AUs that I'd really love to see as an actual thing, like that White Collar Curseworkers AU that cafemassolit and I came up with. Maybe even as a vid, oooh...
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Yuletide tagset has appeared
- Alliance-Union includes Ari II and Catlin II and Florian II
- LeGuin's Annals of the Western Shore -- except I apparently don't remember who any of these people are, oops
- full complement of Biggles folks, haha (I'm still not reading them, but since I've been reading the fic canon-blind, I will read the Yuletide fic)
- Raksura has 8 characters nominated (only half of whom I recognize, I really should read more of these)
- Broken Earth with Essun, Nassun, Schaffa
- Lu Yu and his cats aww XD
- Catch-22
- Chalice with worldbuilding and Mirasol
- Chalion -- whoa, I wasn't expecting 15 characters! (although one is a duplicate) And an interesting mix: the Father and the Mother presumably for worldbuilding pruposes, Ista and Illvin for 'Paladin', Betriz and Iselle for 'Curse', and then a whole bunch of Penric folks, including Penric, Des, Sugane, Nikys, Adelis, Tanar, Bosha, and Alixtra
- Charm of Magpies
- Chrestomanci -- including Christopher, Millie, Conrad, Marianne Pinhoe, Cat Chant, Gabriel de Witt and some others
- Prydain with Worldbuilding, Taran, Eilonwy, and Elidyr (who was predictably my fave)
- The City and the City, with some characters but also Worldbuilding nominated
- Alexbook (Conspiracy of Truths) with Chant and Ylfing
- Daevabad with only two noms -- Jamshid and Muntadhir
- Hardinge's Deeplight, A Face Like Glass, Fly by Night with 0 characters
- Demon's Lexicon with Nick and Alan
- Deerskin
- Doctrine of the Labyrinths with Felix, Mildmay, Kay and Murtagh
- Dragaera with an impressive 12 noms -- the four musketeers, Sethra, Aliera, Zerika, Morrolan, Vlad, Cawti, Loiosh, Kiera the Thief
- Dragon Jousters (wow, I remember none of these people)
- Dragonsbane with John, Jenny, and Morkeleb
- Earthsea including Ged, Tenar, Yarrow, Worldbuiding and others
- Elder Race! Nyr, Lynesse, Esha, and Worldbuilding
- Eleanor and Park (Eleanor, Park, and Park's parents)
- Ethan of Athos with 5 characters
- The Expanse (book series) with Holden, Miller, and The Investigator
- Fandom for Robots, including the two characters and Worldbuilding
- The First Law with Ardee and Glokta
- Flatland again Worldbuilding and A Square
- Cruel Prince with Jude, Taryn, Madoc and Cardan
- Asimov's Foundation
- Founders Trilogy with Worldbuilding, Sancia, Berenice, and Gregor
- Goblin Emperor -- including Worldbuilding, Maia, Csethiro, Csevet, Cala, Beshelar, Setheris and others
- Graceling Realm -- including Fire & Briggan (and Hanna), Katsa & Po, Bitterblue, Giddon, and someone I don't recognize, possibly from the newest book
- The Great Cities -- Bronca and Veneza, aka the two things I liked best about the book
- Greenhollow Duology -- Toby, Henry, and Fay (but where is Mrs Silver?!)
- Hippos Go Berserk! and Moo Baa La La La! by Sandra Boynton, and oh boy I want to see this letter/request XD
- The Iliad with the hard to parse set of Aphrodite, Hector, Helen, and Odysseus
- Ancillary-verse with Breq, Seivarden, Awn, Tisarwat, and Gem of Sphene
- In Other Lands with the two couples, like usual
- Iskyrne including Worldbuilding
- Jackalope Wives including Worldbuilding and Grandma Harken (I should check out any letters)
- JSMN including Worldbuilding, Strange, Norrell, Childermass, Stephen, and some historical magicians
- Kate Daniels including Hugh and Erra (and also The Iron Council separately)
- Kubla Khan including Worldbuilding
- Kushiel Legacy but this year composed entirely of people I don't care about
- Kyoshi books
- Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight ballad
- The Last Binding (Freyabook) with the boys, Maud, Miss Morrissey (but not her sister), Flora and Sutton Cottage
- The Last Unicorn -- including Molly, Schmendrick, and the harpy (and the unicorn). And I did not know there was such a thing as The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey
- Legendborn -- Bree, Selwyn, Nick, and Alice
- Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan with an all-ladies crew of Deryn, Lilit, and Nora Barlow
- The Lions of Al-Rassan
- FINNA-verse, including some characters who I guess are from the sequel?
- Lord of the Flies -- with Jack, Simon, Piggy, and The Lord of the Flies (which I knew from the query post)
- Lynes and Mathey but only with Miss Frost nominated
- Hexarchate with a whopping 17 characters (but no Zehun?)
- Memory Sorrow and Thorn with 6 characters including Josua and Elias and Prince Jiriki
- Monk & Robot (sigh) with Dex, Mosscap, and Worldbuilding
- Monster of Elendhaven
- Murderbot Diaries with 13 characters (including all the usual suspects and Worldbuilding)
- Neverwhere -- including Door, Hunter, Carabas, and Richard
- Toby Daye including the Luidaeg
- Philosopher's Flight series with only Worldbuilding nominated (man, if I was caught up and if the books weren't long and dense, I might have actually offered this... I sure hope someone writes it)
- Piranesi including Worldbuilding
- The Poppy War with Rin, Kitay, Nezha, and Altan
- The Power including Worldbuilding, Allie, Roxy, and Olatunde
- The Queen's Thief with 28 nominations XD
- She Who Became the Sun with Zhu, Xu Da, Ma, Esen, Ouyang, and Wang Baoxiang (not planning on offering or requesting, but hope this gets some fic!)
- Raven Tower with Eolo and SaPotH
- Rebecca with Narrator, Maxim, Mrs Danvers, and Rebecca
- Rivers of London with Peter, Nightingale, Beverley, Varvara, Abigail, Molly, Peter's mum, David Mellenby, Elsie, Caroline and Grace Yutani
- Asimov's Robots including R.Daneel and Lije, and Powell & Donovan in addition to Susan Calvin and robots
- Scholomance including worldbuilding, Liesel, parents, and Patience the Maw-Mouth XD (and also other more expected characters)
- Seraphina -- Seraphina, Orma, Tess, and Spira
- The Serpent Gates -- including Tal, Belthandros Sethennai, the snake lady, worldbuilding, and many others
- SoftBank's Next 30 Year Vision with the characters of Brian Computer, Human Brain, Robot on p.60, and Worldbuilding (I want to read this letter lol)
- Space Between Worlds
- Spinning Silver with Miryem, Wanda, Irina, Mirnatius, the Staryk Lord, and Rebekah bat Flek
- Steerswoman including Worldbuilding
- Swordspoint with Alec, Richard, Kate, and Artimisia
- Tam Lin (Pamela Dean)
- Tamir Trilogy (Tamir and Ki only)
- Tarot Sequence with Rune, Brand, Addam, and oddly Mayan
- Terra Ignota with just Mycroft, Apollo, and Worldbuilding
- Temeraire -- including lots of people but also Napoleon, Perscitia, and the Rolands
- Tiffany Aching with just Tiffany nominated (oddly...)
- Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius with Worldbuilding nominated
- True Pretense -- aww! Ash, Lydia, Rafe and Jamie
- Unnatural Magic -- including Loga, Jeckran, Tsira, and Jok Finnbair
- Uprooted -- with Agnieszhka, Kasia, Sarkan, Solya, Alosha, Marek,
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar XD (with the caterpillar nominated)
- Warchild -- with Ryan, Admiral Ashrafi, Jos, and Yuri
- Watchmaker of Filigree Street -- Thaniel, Mori, Grace, Akira, Six, and Katsu
- Wayfarers, including characters from all 4 books (most interesting to me, Sidra, Owl, Pepper; Tessa Santoso) and Worldbuilding
- Westing Game
- Whyborne & Griffin
- Will Darling books
- A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Bakng -- Mona, Spindle, Aunt Tabitha, and Ethan
- Yudah Cohen Series (with 0 characters nominated)
- Skazka o Tsare Saltane
- Sobachye Serdtse
- Taskmaster RPF -- Alex, Greg, Hugh, Mike, Nish, Rhod, Richard Herring, Roisin, Sophie, and Victoria Coren-Mitchell (...did I nominate this inmy sleep? it's full of my favorites XD)
- Anya's Ghost with 0 characters
- Nimona (Nimona, Goldenloin, Blackheart, and the Director)
- Fawlty Towers with Basil, Sybil, Polly, and Manuel
- The Good Place with Team Cockroach, Vicky, Shawn, and Kamilah
- Grace and Frankie (just the two of them)
- Killjoys, including Lucy and Pree
- Ms Marvel with Kamala, Aamir, their parents, grandmother, Bruno, Nakia, Zoe, Kamran, Aisha the Djinn, and Najma (it... had not occurred to me this would be eligible, but that's sweet!)
- Paper Girls TV show (with the 4 girls) -- which I should watch
- Sluga narodu / Servant of the People (aka the TV show where Zelensky played an entertianer turned president before, well, you know; I haven't watched it, but B is a fan)
- Aww, Classical Rhetorical Excercises are nominated again!
- Apple products anthro (iPhone 14, AirPods, Apple Watch) XD
- Butter (anthropomorphic) [with Eastern US butter and Western US butter, huh)
- Periodic Table Anthro with Cl, F, I, O, Zr, and Worldbuilding [...I'm offering this again, aren't I XD] -- but also:
- Elements -- Experiments in Character Design (Be, Cl, B, Tc)
- Tarot -- Fool, Magcian, The High Priestess, Hermit
- Top 5 Rat Movies I Just Made Up -- Legends of the Great Below
What I have been doing:
1) catching up on Penric & Desdemona
2) writing up my thoughts about the six Penric books I'd read in the last several weeks
3) writing my Yuletide letter
4) browsing the newly released Yuletide tagset
No regrets, tbh, but I may feel differently come Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday night...
*
A couple of weeks ago I had been trying to think of what I might want to request for Yuletide, given the bounty that I got last year (♥!) and my general lack of consuming new fiction since around the time Yuletide requests closed last year, and wasn't sure I had three things I wanted to ask for, but then I was browsing the nominations spreadshet and saw sholio's Chalion-verse nom and was like, OH YEAH, I meant to catch up on Penric and specifically the characters introduced in Penric's Mission, after falling off the wagon after Mira's Last Dance in 2018. So I did.
I wrote these up as I read them, so each contains spoilers for itself (and potentially earlier entries in the series), but not for subsequent books.
14. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Prisoner of Limnos -- This picks up not too long after Mira's Last Dance, with Penric, Nikys, and Adelis established in the court of Duke Jurgo of Orbas, Adelis with some victories behind his belt as a general for this new power, Nikys as a lady-in-waiting to the Duke's young daughter, and Penric being useful in learned divine/sorcerer ways -- but with the courtship between Penric and Nikys unresolved. This is the book that resolves that courtship, and that was the part of the whole thing that was least interesting to me, alas.
Because while I like Penric, and I like Nikyis fine, their feelings about each other are the least interesting things about them to me, and I find the relationship itself -- like, the shippiness of them, the vibe between them -- to be entirely devoid of whatever it is that makes couples interesting to me. I guess, while there is some conflict, it's not interesting conflict? And Nikys's reluctance about getting together with Penric is plausible, I guess, between Desdemona being part of the relationshp inevitably and being traumatized by losing one husband already (and Penric did botch broaching the whole thing in the previous book), but I also don't find them compelling to read about... (maybe it's one of those things I'll understand later, like I did with Komarr, but I kind of hope not). But, anyway, the longer the story spent on Pen/Nikys, the less into the relationship I got, and the more time one of them spent mooning about the other, the less I enjoyed being in that POV, which, by the end, I think made me like both characters less than when I started. Oops. Fortunately, I liked them quite a lot when I started and so still liked them by the end.
Other than the Penric/Nikys, though, I really enjoyed this story! And there's plenty of story beyond the courtship, to be fair. Spoilers from here I really liked everything we saw of the Xarre household, especially albino assassin-eunuch Bosha (who, coming on the heels of She Who Became the Sun, was SO REFRESHING with his lack of drama and high tragedy XD Like, I mean, there's drama and high tragedy in his life, but he ignores it and just goes about doing the necessary. So nice!), but really everyone and the relationships between everyone. Tanar (the subject of Adelis's suspended courtship) is really fun, with her multifaceted pursuits. I really liked her relationship with Bosha and their backstory (although I didn't really buy that Bosha would share it with Penric et al during a random carriage ride; he doesn't see the type given to confiding in others), and I liked the relationship between Tanar and her mother Lady Xarre, too -- it's pretty unusual to see a strong-willed daughter and mother getting along, but clearly they've worked out a very stable, pragmatic system between themselves, and it was nice to see. I'm really looking forward to seeing Adelis interact with this whole household, and especially to see what his relationship with Bosha is like. (And, to my earlier point, the brief interlude at the Xarre household made me more interested in any number of ships -- Tanar/Bosha, Adelis/Tanar/Bosha, Tanar/Nikys, Penric/Bosha even -- than Pen/Nikys XD)
I also enjoyed the actual prisoner heist, which was very fun (I mean, we already know LMB does good heists), and it was great to meet Nikys's mother Idrene, which was expected based on the premise and which I was really looking forward to. And it was ALSO neat to meet Nikys's other brother (the out-of-wedlock child of Idrene and her young army officer lover who was killed before they could get married), whose existence I had completely forgotten about, and even when he was mentioned again in this book, I had not been expecting him to show up, at least not in such an active role! Anyway, Ikos was great; I was impressed with his engineering contraption and amused by Penric's (and especially Desdemona's) extreme DO NOT WANT at being confronted with it -- and I love that Idrene's reaction to the story is REGRET that she didn't get to try out the contraption! There is some additional very nice family stuff for the Idrene-Florina-old General Arisaydia-Adelis-and-Nikys family unit, which especially convinces me that I'd love to know more about Idrene and Florina's relationship; it is so clear they loved each other a lot, but also there's the great bit where Idrene talks about how she had to be the strong, practical one, essentially, despite being the junior wife.
Oh, randomly, I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I was getting strong Mont St Michel vibes from Limnos, and the "hostile needlework" of the historical tapestry made me think of Bayeux (which is not the same place as Mont St Michel, but close enough that I wonder if those connotations are intentional).
Quotes:
re: hiding Penric's Temple braids in his medical case: "If it ever came to the valise being violently turned out, it was likely the assailant would be discovering Pen's abilities in more direct ways."
Des asking about Idrene: "Is she very level-headed in emergencies?"
Nikys: "Well, she raised Adelis and me."
Nikys: "Adelis is not the sort o who inspires poisoning. He's the sort of man who inspires hitting on the head with a skillet."
Penric muffled a too-agreeing snort. [...] "Have you ever done so?"
"Not since we were twelve, I admit. [...] Then he grew too tall to reach."
At the fountain, where Nikys has her visitation by the Daughter: "Des was crying, too. Pen was surrounded, inside and out, by crying women. It was appalling."
"A man with a grappling hook and a death wish might make something of that [climbing out the window], but he had brought neither." (Well, fortunately than Ikos shows up with a souped up version of the former.)
Nikys, after Bosha was complaining that Tanar might run off to become a pirate queen: "Do pirate queens keep secretaries?"
Bosha: "I dread finding out."
So definitely a book I liked a lot on the whole (despite the near-total lack of Adelis, except in flashbacks and conversation). And also a book I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. to finish, which doesn't happen to me much and is a testament to how well it hit.
15. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Orphans of Raspay -- this one, conversely, was (relatively) a bit of a slog for me, for a Bujold book -- by which I mean that it went down very easy whenever I was reading it, but once I put it down, it wasn't drawing me back the way the other books in this stretch did. It took me a while to figure out why, and I think mostly it's the "fucking ships" effect ("fucking ships" is what I started calling it some years ago, after two series I'd been enjoying a lot in book 1 -- Inda and the Gentlemen Bastards -- suddenly veered onto ships with book 2 and suddenly I was having way less fun. Ships are apparently an anti-kink of mine, as far as settings go XD). But also, this is the first book in a while that Penric is on his own (for most of it) -- except for Desdemona, obviously -- in terms of returning characters, that is. He had the girls, but I never did learn to tell them apart, and I'm still not totally clear what this interlude was for, in terms of Pen's character arc.
Spoilers I thought at first that he and Nikys were going to end up adopting the girls, but was much happier with the real outcome, which is that their father showed up, turned out to be a good and loving father whose life was nevertheless too complicated to take the girls with him, and they worked out a non-shmoopy solution that seemed to make everyone happy. But the "reset" with the girls not ending up in Penric's care long-term was even more puzzling from an arc perspective... was all that just to give Penric a taste of parenthood? but, like, I didn't think he needed to learn anything from that experience, so *shrug* I guess it does mark the first time in several books that Penric has to deal with ordinary people, without the protection of his rank/patronage himself, but, like, "Borders of Infinity" this isn't... I guess it is interesting to learn that a prostitute was either a great soul worthy of the Bastard's bargaining or an outright saint, and it's neat how her daughters have no inkling of this, so it comes as a surprise to the reader as well.
Outside of that, I guess there was some fun in reading through Penric's carefully laid plans all falling apart as the rescued prisoners bailed on him and the crew of the long-searched boat betrayed them, until he finally just started burning shit down. And of course there's the great moment when Adelis turns up with the cavalry navy, ostensibly to rescue Penric but actually Penric's pretty well rescued himself. And the anti-ransom XD But actually the little moment of cordial, shared bloody-mindedness between Adelis and Desdemona was my favorite thing in the book. I also enjoyed the revelation that Idrene "seemed to take Des as a crony, which had led to some very odd conversations of a sort Pen was sure few husbands were privy to."
Oh, and there's a bunch of theological stuff, too, I guess, between Quintarians and Quadrenes, but while I find the framework of the Five Gods really neat, and like all the trappings, the sacred animals, who falls under the jurisdiction of which god, the gestures, the theology I'm really not interested in, so that was largely lost on me.
And while I'm noting down random stuff, this was also the book in which I got really tired of people he met admiring / commenting on Penrics, good looks, eyes, hair, etc. It makes sense because nobody knows who he is, so his looks are what people are going on, but it got old real quick, and made him sound like a Mary Sue.
Randomly but on a more positive note, I enjoyed Penric's continued dismay at the dried fish blocks people were eating and offering to him, which he continues to refuse to recognize as food. (I say this as someone who actually really likes dried fish/taranka!)
Quotes:
"The stagecraft was unnecessary for lighting the fire, except perhaps under Godino."
16. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Physicians of Vilnoc -- this one was really good, but I'm also very glad I have not been reading these Penric books as they came out, because this one was released in May 2000, and that would NOT have been a good time to read a book about a plague, doctors running themselves ragged trying to save people with insufficient resources, etc.
I do tend to like "genre does medical thriller/mystery" stories a lot, and this one worked well for me. Spoilers And it was not easy, but good to see Penric not at his loweste point, which we only get to hear about from a point of reflection, his confession to Rede and Desdemona's warnings, but to see how tough it gets when he is nowhere near that nadir but heading off in the same direction, if that makes any sense -- only seeing the worst cases, and trying to fill any gap that opens up in his time with more work, remembering the losses and not the successes.
We don't get to see much of the established characters in this, except Penric himself (although Adelis's interplay with Des continues to be wonderful), but I liked Dubro and his Maska a lot (Maska is such a Good Boy! but seriously, it's really cute to have a demon who was a dog last, and the different kind of relationship that is from Penric's mentorship from Desdemona or someone just coming in possession of a wild animal demon), and I liked Rede (giving himself rat flea bites FOR SCIENCE), and I deifnitely DID NOT see coming Penric matchmaking the two of them towards a demon betrothal/bequest/apprenticeship. I was also amused by Penric's dismay that his patients (soldiers and Rusylli) seemed to listen and trust more the less experience Dubro, who looks grandfatherly and is a veteran himself, than they do Penric's authority. Oh, and while Adelis was pretty scarce in this despite the action taking place in his fort, I did really enjoy his ruse with getting Penric the opportunity to slaughter the larger animals without freaking out the soldiers -- that was clever! (saying it made the meat taste better and insisting the animals killed that way be reserved for the officers' mess).
Not surprised that by the epilogue Penric and Nikys have advanced to having a kid, and was touched that they named her after Adelis's mother and that Idrene appeared the most touched by this. And I'm equally aww that Penric is hoping to name their second child Llewyn, after the princess-archdivine :'(
Quotes:
The Rusylli: "These eastern Temple-men are bookish fellows, aren't they?" "That doesn't make them any less witless. Just more nearsighted."
re: the past suicide attempt: "His life in Orbas, his new family, held more hostages against him now, blocking that form of flight."
17. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Assassins of Thasalon -- This was a really fun read, and I can see why it grew to (short) novel size rather than a novella like the others, because there was a lot of fun plot to cover. SPOILERS!
I really enjoyed the, like, police procedural aspects of this book, with demon as disposable murder weapon -- which I guess you can get away with for a while until The Bastard takes notice. I was not expecting it to end, essentially, in a courtroom drama, not with assassins all over the place and a civil war in the wings, but LMB seems to delight in setting up situations where Adelis arrives and has nothing to do because Penric's already taken care of everything (or, OK, in this case it was Penric and Blessed Iroki).
I liked Alixtra, both as a person and as an illustration of yet another way to stumble into being a sorcerer, and was glad that she and her weasel demon got a reprieve -- and that she ended up giving the demon the name they would have called a child, had she given birth to a daughter rather than a son, and reporting on Arra's progress as one would with an infant -- her darksight came in! she said her first word! (Alixtra and Penric bonding over comparing childhood language acquisition was very cute, and I was amused to learn that Rina's first word was "Kitty!")
The part I was looking forward to the most, since it was pretty clear from the title that Penric was going to Thasalon, was seeing the Xarre household again, and they did not disappoint. I did NOT guess that Tanar was the person who had poisoned Methani (to give Adelis the best advantage), but it's a very Bujoldean heroine thing to do, and I definitely approve -- and I also loved the way Bosha reacted once he figured it out, which didn't take him long at all. (It was also interesting to come across Penric's musings towards the end that maybe the reason the Bastard wanted Alixtra to come back to Thasalon was to inspire Tanar to the action she took. Although Tanar does not strike me as a person who requires a lot of external inspiration.) I like both Tanar and Bosha a lot, and the relationship between them; I'm actually perfectly happy for Tanar to prioritize her responsibility to Bosha over Adelis. And I find it cute that Des approves of her but especially that Des feels it is up to her to judge her fit for marrying Adelis or not. Tanar and Bosha apparently hit some kind of fealty kink sweet spot for me, like, right on the money, so I was invested in them from the start, and even more so in this book when Bosha got to bear up stoically under torture to protect Tanar. Just, sometimes LMB writes things that are very relevant to my id, is what I'm saying.
I was, of course, hoping for more Adelis; I did not think it would take until 90% into the book for him to show up again, or that the action would be all wrapped up by then XD I enjoyed what we got of him at the start, the way he handles Gria and the offer (with full transparency, and leaning towards staying in Orbas until the last assassination attempt pisses him off), the cute moments with Desdemona and with his niece, and then the little bit we got at the end, the understated reunion with Tanar, the endorsement of Bosha feeling like he can let someone else protect Tanar (at least physically) because he is slowing down. Too bad we didn't get to see more of the household interacting after Adelis's arrival, but I was amused at the thought of Bosha being essentially Tanar's maid of honor at the wedding, and Penric sort of having to be best man, as the only family there. I am, however, disappointed that Adelis is staying on in Cedonia, since it must mean even less of him appearing in the Penric books, and probably less reason to look in on the Xarre ladies and Bosha, too, since presumably this means the relations between Cedonia and Orbas will be normalized.
Blessed Iroki was interesting, even though I don't particularly care about him or the theology angle in general. I mean, LMB's saints in this 'verse are not very conventionally saintly, we saw that with Ista as far back as Paladin, but this country bumpkin version who doesn't know fancy temple words and just wants to be left alone to fish was pretty cute, and especially cute was how excited he got about seeing whales. Oh, and I thought it was very cute that ke refers to Desdemona as "Miss Big Demon" XD
Other cute things: Penric having actually tried out and gotten to work the sorcerously induced narcolepsy that he was thinking about in the last book, which he is now (cautiously) willing to try on humans, and which everyone calls "that weird thing you do to those poor rats", and him thinking of it first and foremost for medical applications (anaesthesia). Penric using playing with Kittio as an excuse to try out pulling (as well as riding in) a wicker cart. Rina as a toddler, with her "attendant cat", and her interaction with Adelis, which was adorable. I'm definitely with Nikys, though, on not approving of Penric using shamanic geas to make a baby go to sleep; it's relatable to WANT to, but it doesn't seem like it would be good for the baby...
Quotes:
Penric and Adelis saying good-bye as Adelis is heading off to Thasalon: Adelis gripped Pen's arm in the gesture of military brotherhood. [...] "Don't waste my work," Pen murmured. Adelis touched the burn scars by his eyes and smiled grimly. "I'll try not.""
"The man was embezzling demons?"
"Pen wasn't sure but that the Five celebrated death as gladly as birth, conjoined aspects of the uneding immigration of souls into Their realm. [...] Finished or unfinished might matter to Them, though, whether souls arrived in Their arms healthy and splendid, or miscarried or stillborn or crippled or mutilated by their truncated gestations in the world of matter."
"He still had no idea whether all this prudence was unneeded, sufficient, or too late."
"Really, murmured De, Tronio is like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions" [about Tronio bringing magistrates, guards, and a petty saint of the Father to arrest Penric, which turns into his own arrest]
18. Lois McMaster Bujold, Knot of Shadows -- a return to a "smaller" murder mystery, and this one was creepy and sad in a number of ways, but not really what I wanted out of a Penric book. The death magic/miracle worldbuilding implications are interesting, but at this point I'm much more into the found family aspects of the Penric & Desdemona books than the demon-assisted uncanny mystery solving, or the theology. The other thing is, I found the wins in this one particularly bleak.
Like, the main successes of the story are, what -- SPOILERS for everything -- finding the body of a four-year-old and ensuring that his soul is claimed by the Son of Autumn rather than sundered, and that his family gets closure -- which, yes, are important, but still very sad. And I guess the Bastard's justice, though that is only observed, with the falsely accused clerk presumably being vindicated in the future, after investigation, which is also pretty hollow, considering his and his mother's suicide. And then, I guess, Penric figuring out, at the end, why death magic works for some supplicants and not other, and that -- if I understood that correctly, I wasn't sure I was fully following -- it is also a way to save the supplicant soul from self-sundering in despair? So in a way it's a discovery that Vissa, or at least Vissa's soul, had a kind of rescue, too -- but that's a "happy ending" that relies on theological nuance that really doesn't do much for me, so doesn't feel like any sort of happy ending to me. There isn't even the satisfaction of figuring out the embezzler's/accusers motivations, which might have at least been satisfying on a mystery level; figuring out how the body came to be wearing a threadbare nightshirt and appearing to have died by drowning doesn't really substitute for it.
The mystery is neat, the worldbuilding is nicely creepy -- it was a fitting book to be reading as Halloween season kicked off -- and I was happy to see Alixtra and Arra coming along, and Penric still bopping them on the head for praise (that's a very cute detail), and I was happy to see Penric and Nikys have their second kid now and did indeed name him Llewyn, but I feel like I would've preferred the plot of this novella to be the B plot, or even the A plot, of a longer book where some actual happy things happened too.
19. Lois McMaster Bujold, Masquerade in Lodi -- this is an older one, both in terms of publication date (October 2020) and especially in terms of series chronology (before Penric's Mission), so I left it for last, since I knew it wouldn't have any of the characters I wanted to see more of (the Arisaydia siblings whom Penric only meets in 'Mission' and everyone he comes to know because of them). I'm mostly trying to read the series in internal chronology order, but of course it was not possible with this one, since I had already read 'Mission' before this was written. But actually I'm glad I read it after 'Physicians' (as it was written), because it's reassuring to be reading it from a vantage point where I know Penric comes to be at peace, more or less, about sorcerous healing, but in this book, right after his experience at Martenbridge, he is still getting over the trauma. It's not prominent or anything, but he is still very much getting over it, and grieving his mother and the princess-archidvine in a way that's visible to the saint, and kind of avoiding people (not that it helps him much), and, just, I was glad to know he's got a better life waiting for him just around the corner as I was reading this.
I enjoyed the story, another "smaller" mystery, strife among individuals rather than countries, and people Penric only deals with in passing. Spoilers! It was neat to get a look at a "mad" demon, and I was especially intrigued by it having spent some time in dolphins -- who apparently not only grieve but also speak, if that's what possessed!Ree's unintelligible squeaks were? I was also glad, after the very melancholy Knot of Shadows, that Penric and Chio got to rescue an actual living person and return him to his family, and there was a joyful reunion; I'm really glad it wasn't 'Knot' that I read last. I have no strong feelings about any characters introduced in this, but they were nice to spend time with. With Chio, it was interesting to see a very differnt saint than Blessed Iroki, and I was especially amused that her guardian couldn't tell when she was really being guided by her god and when she was just being a willful teenage girl and using the Bastard as a handy excuse. I had actually quite liked Merin when he was first introduced, but it pretty quickly became clear that he was not the caring friend looking for his cabin mate who had miraculously survived (it actually took Penric rather a long time to catch onto this, but I guess he was pretty busy with other things). Anyway, I do think it's neat the way Merin's real motivations are foreshadowed with the easy way he lies to Ree's sisters, ostensibly to keep them calm, and his grumbling about this fortune -- LMB does good antagonists! But it was too bad that he turned out to be a bad guy, I thought. I do find it interesting that it was Ree's uncle recommending Merin to one of his bitter rivals when he discovered the man to be thieving -- instead of trying to prosecute him (which would have been difficult) inadvertently led to this situation where Ree and Merin were on the same ship and Ree didn't know not to trust him.
On a random note, Lodi feels very Venice-like, which was neat, because I've actually been to Venice, so could more readily imagine the surroundings and Penric et al wandering between the bridges and canals.
*
I forgot to include it in my last Taskmaster-related post, but simply must share: scytale has fallen down the TM rabbit hole and is currently watching series 4, which is one of my personal favorites, and has posited a crime show/mystery/detectives/police procedural AU for the Taskmaster series 4 gang, which I just had to share with y'all. Excerpts below the cut for posterity, because the two of us elaborating on this idea is springkled across a bunch of long comments:
scytale: Between the first comparison to serial killers and Mel and Hugh's trailer, I have spent far too long casting everyone in a crime show/AU. Joe and Lolly are the detectives! Noel is in the ensemble but not directly on the case (tech? mortician? with outfits, obviously), and Mel as a journalist looking for a scoop (she never wants to write about cake again). Hugh is the charming, brilliant criminal who is ultimately foiled by his own hubris (the nonchalant smugness whenever he gets questioned probably did not help either). Also, he talks about facts about clouds and clocks, and it would all tie to the show's nihilistic themes about human nature except the show isn't serious or bleak enough to have those.
me: OMG, brilliant! Of course Hugh is the criminal mastermind brought down by hubris, and yes to the motif of clocks and clouds <333 I love the idea of Joe and Lolly as junior detectives (Greg is the grumpy superindendent/police chief with a hidden heart of gold and Alex is his put-upon secretary, Y/Y?), and Noel makes perfect sense as someone in a vaguely techy role that allows him to be weird and flamboyant -- medical examiner, maybe? I do feel like something death-adjacent would fit his vibe.
For Mel, journalist fed up with fluff pieces makes a lot of sense, but I was also thinking just now that she'd make a great cozy amateur detective. Like, her day job is, IDK, running a guinea pig farm, or something equally quirky, but she is always getting involved in people's lives because she just can't help herself, and she is so charming and friendly that everyone talks to her, even when they shouldn't.
scytale: Come to think of it, I think they both [clocks and clouds] feel like a reflection of how analytic [Hugh] is in the tasks! And of course can be applied to his criminal masterinding. :D
You're right -- Joe and Lolly should definitely be junior detectives! YYYYYY to Greg as the superintendent police chief lounging behind a desk, and Alex as the put-upon secretary (and water cooler gossip wonders what's really going on there)!
Greg can even keep the youth jokes (what is this emoji, Lolly).
And yes, medical examiner [for Noel]! :D Death adjacent is great, and I feel like there should be a running joke of him doing offhand experiments (the cake in the washing machine! but more forensics-like?).
Oooh, I like cozy amateur detective [for Mel], and the guinea pig farm is genius especially if we get to see the guinea pigs. (Please let us see this prize-winning boar).
Also, she should definitely get to ride a train at least once.
me: (Also, detective AU!Joe can keep his habit of kissing the Taskmaster's superintendent's portrait.)
And nobody would be able to tell when [Noel] is doing Real Science and when he is just being odd.
It would be a travesty if [Mel didn't get to ride a train]! In fact, if we're talking TV show, then I bet the credits for Mel feature her having a really grand time riding a special train. (Hugh is looking at a clock. Or possibly a cloud.)
scytale: YES. And by extension, Greg should definitely have a very fancy portrait as a superintendent! As superintendents do!
These credits sound so plausible, omg. :D I'm imagining one of those very artsy credits with lots of fancy cuts and polish.
(The best part is, this all still sounds the normal amount of weird for Taskmaster, and the characters translate so well to quirky crime drama people.)
This now joins the list of Oddly Specific AUs that I'd really love to see as an actual thing, like that White Collar Curseworkers AU that cafemassolit and I came up with. Maybe even as a vid, oooh...
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Yuletide tagset has appeared
- Alliance-Union includes Ari II and Catlin II and Florian II
- LeGuin's Annals of the Western Shore -- except I apparently don't remember who any of these people are, oops
- full complement of Biggles folks, haha (I'm still not reading them, but since I've been reading the fic canon-blind, I will read the Yuletide fic)
- Raksura has 8 characters nominated (only half of whom I recognize, I really should read more of these)
- Broken Earth with Essun, Nassun, Schaffa
- Lu Yu and his cats aww XD
- Catch-22
- Chalice with worldbuilding and Mirasol
- Chalion -- whoa, I wasn't expecting 15 characters! (although one is a duplicate) And an interesting mix: the Father and the Mother presumably for worldbuilding pruposes, Ista and Illvin for 'Paladin', Betriz and Iselle for 'Curse', and then a whole bunch of Penric folks, including Penric, Des, Sugane, Nikys, Adelis, Tanar, Bosha, and Alixtra
- Charm of Magpies
- Chrestomanci -- including Christopher, Millie, Conrad, Marianne Pinhoe, Cat Chant, Gabriel de Witt and some others
- Prydain with Worldbuilding, Taran, Eilonwy, and Elidyr (who was predictably my fave)
- The City and the City, with some characters but also Worldbuilding nominated
- Alexbook (Conspiracy of Truths) with Chant and Ylfing
- Daevabad with only two noms -- Jamshid and Muntadhir
- Hardinge's Deeplight, A Face Like Glass, Fly by Night with 0 characters
- Demon's Lexicon with Nick and Alan
- Deerskin
- Doctrine of the Labyrinths with Felix, Mildmay, Kay and Murtagh
- Dragaera with an impressive 12 noms -- the four musketeers, Sethra, Aliera, Zerika, Morrolan, Vlad, Cawti, Loiosh, Kiera the Thief
- Dragon Jousters (wow, I remember none of these people)
- Dragonsbane with John, Jenny, and Morkeleb
- Earthsea including Ged, Tenar, Yarrow, Worldbuiding and others
- Elder Race! Nyr, Lynesse, Esha, and Worldbuilding
- Eleanor and Park (Eleanor, Park, and Park's parents)
- Ethan of Athos with 5 characters
- The Expanse (book series) with Holden, Miller, and The Investigator
- Fandom for Robots, including the two characters and Worldbuilding
- The First Law with Ardee and Glokta
- Flatland again Worldbuilding and A Square
- Cruel Prince with Jude, Taryn, Madoc and Cardan
- Asimov's Foundation
- Founders Trilogy with Worldbuilding, Sancia, Berenice, and Gregor
- Goblin Emperor -- including Worldbuilding, Maia, Csethiro, Csevet, Cala, Beshelar, Setheris and others
- Graceling Realm -- including Fire & Briggan (and Hanna), Katsa & Po, Bitterblue, Giddon, and someone I don't recognize, possibly from the newest book
- The Great Cities -- Bronca and Veneza, aka the two things I liked best about the book
- Greenhollow Duology -- Toby, Henry, and Fay (but where is Mrs Silver?!)
- Hippos Go Berserk! and Moo Baa La La La! by Sandra Boynton, and oh boy I want to see this letter/request XD
- The Iliad with the hard to parse set of Aphrodite, Hector, Helen, and Odysseus
- Ancillary-verse with Breq, Seivarden, Awn, Tisarwat, and Gem of Sphene
- In Other Lands with the two couples, like usual
- Iskyrne including Worldbuilding
- Jackalope Wives including Worldbuilding and Grandma Harken (I should check out any letters)
- JSMN including Worldbuilding, Strange, Norrell, Childermass, Stephen, and some historical magicians
- Kate Daniels including Hugh and Erra (and also The Iron Council separately)
- Kubla Khan including Worldbuilding
- Kushiel Legacy but this year composed entirely of people I don't care about
- Kyoshi books
- Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight ballad
- The Last Binding (Freyabook) with the boys, Maud, Miss Morrissey (but not her sister), Flora and Sutton Cottage
- The Last Unicorn -- including Molly, Schmendrick, and the harpy (and the unicorn). And I did not know there was such a thing as The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey
- Legendborn -- Bree, Selwyn, Nick, and Alice
- Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan with an all-ladies crew of Deryn, Lilit, and Nora Barlow
- The Lions of Al-Rassan
- FINNA-verse, including some characters who I guess are from the sequel?
- Lord of the Flies -- with Jack, Simon, Piggy, and The Lord of the Flies (which I knew from the query post)
- Lynes and Mathey but only with Miss Frost nominated
- Hexarchate with a whopping 17 characters (but no Zehun?)
- Memory Sorrow and Thorn with 6 characters including Josua and Elias and Prince Jiriki
- Monk & Robot (sigh) with Dex, Mosscap, and Worldbuilding
- Monster of Elendhaven
- Murderbot Diaries with 13 characters (including all the usual suspects and Worldbuilding)
- Neverwhere -- including Door, Hunter, Carabas, and Richard
- Toby Daye including the Luidaeg
- Philosopher's Flight series with only Worldbuilding nominated (man, if I was caught up and if the books weren't long and dense, I might have actually offered this... I sure hope someone writes it)
- Piranesi including Worldbuilding
- The Poppy War with Rin, Kitay, Nezha, and Altan
- The Power including Worldbuilding, Allie, Roxy, and Olatunde
- The Queen's Thief with 28 nominations XD
- She Who Became the Sun with Zhu, Xu Da, Ma, Esen, Ouyang, and Wang Baoxiang (not planning on offering or requesting, but hope this gets some fic!)
- Raven Tower with Eolo and SaPotH
- Rebecca with Narrator, Maxim, Mrs Danvers, and Rebecca
- Rivers of London with Peter, Nightingale, Beverley, Varvara, Abigail, Molly, Peter's mum, David Mellenby, Elsie, Caroline and Grace Yutani
- Asimov's Robots including R.Daneel and Lije, and Powell & Donovan in addition to Susan Calvin and robots
- Scholomance including worldbuilding, Liesel, parents, and Patience the Maw-Mouth XD (and also other more expected characters)
- Seraphina -- Seraphina, Orma, Tess, and Spira
- The Serpent Gates -- including Tal, Belthandros Sethennai, the snake lady, worldbuilding, and many others
- SoftBank's Next 30 Year Vision with the characters of Brian Computer, Human Brain, Robot on p.60, and Worldbuilding (I want to read this letter lol)
- Space Between Worlds
- Spinning Silver with Miryem, Wanda, Irina, Mirnatius, the Staryk Lord, and Rebekah bat Flek
- Steerswoman including Worldbuilding
- Swordspoint with Alec, Richard, Kate, and Artimisia
- Tam Lin (Pamela Dean)
- Tamir Trilogy (Tamir and Ki only)
- Tarot Sequence with Rune, Brand, Addam, and oddly Mayan
- Terra Ignota with just Mycroft, Apollo, and Worldbuilding
- Temeraire -- including lots of people but also Napoleon, Perscitia, and the Rolands
- Tiffany Aching with just Tiffany nominated (oddly...)
- Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius with Worldbuilding nominated
- True Pretense -- aww! Ash, Lydia, Rafe and Jamie
- Unnatural Magic -- including Loga, Jeckran, Tsira, and Jok Finnbair
- Uprooted -- with Agnieszhka, Kasia, Sarkan, Solya, Alosha, Marek,
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar XD (with the caterpillar nominated)
- Warchild -- with Ryan, Admiral Ashrafi, Jos, and Yuri
- Watchmaker of Filigree Street -- Thaniel, Mori, Grace, Akira, Six, and Katsu
- Wayfarers, including characters from all 4 books (most interesting to me, Sidra, Owl, Pepper; Tessa Santoso) and Worldbuilding
- Westing Game
- Whyborne & Griffin
- Will Darling books
- A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Bakng -- Mona, Spindle, Aunt Tabitha, and Ethan
- Yudah Cohen Series (with 0 characters nominated)
- Skazka o Tsare Saltane
- Sobachye Serdtse
- Taskmaster RPF -- Alex, Greg, Hugh, Mike, Nish, Rhod, Richard Herring, Roisin, Sophie, and Victoria Coren-Mitchell (...did I nominate this inmy sleep? it's full of my favorites XD)
- Anya's Ghost with 0 characters
- Nimona (Nimona, Goldenloin, Blackheart, and the Director)
- Fawlty Towers with Basil, Sybil, Polly, and Manuel
- The Good Place with Team Cockroach, Vicky, Shawn, and Kamilah
- Grace and Frankie (just the two of them)
- Killjoys, including Lucy and Pree
- Ms Marvel with Kamala, Aamir, their parents, grandmother, Bruno, Nakia, Zoe, Kamran, Aisha the Djinn, and Najma (it... had not occurred to me this would be eligible, but that's sweet!)
- Paper Girls TV show (with the 4 girls) -- which I should watch
- Sluga narodu / Servant of the People (aka the TV show where Zelensky played an entertianer turned president before, well, you know; I haven't watched it, but B is a fan)
- Aww, Classical Rhetorical Excercises are nominated again!
- Apple products anthro (iPhone 14, AirPods, Apple Watch) XD
- Butter (anthropomorphic) [with Eastern US butter and Western US butter, huh)
- Periodic Table Anthro with Cl, F, I, O, Zr, and Worldbuilding [...I'm offering this again, aren't I XD] -- but also:
- Elements -- Experiments in Character Design (Be, Cl, B, Tc)
- Tarot -- Fool, Magcian, The High Priestess, Hermit
- Top 5 Rat Movies I Just Made Up -- Legends of the Great Below