Penric and the Shaman

This was a lovely, quick read that probed deeply into questions of responsibility and free will. I've come to expect nothing less from Bujold. The first Penric story managed to make demon possession into an almost cuddly coming of age tale. So it's no surprise that she manages to do the same thing with a grisly murder.

The story shifts between three points of view: Penric (and his demon), a murderer on the run from authorities, and the man hunting the murderer. The fun comes in the fact that they're all incredibly sympathetic. Even the murderer. Bujold hasn't written a pure villain since Falling Free, so I should have expected that there would be more to the story than met the eye.

I also love the world that Bujold set this story in, and I'm always glad for a chance to return to it. The Curse of Chalion is how I found her in the first place, so this setting has a special place in my heart. The world is a little disparate. Other than the gods, it's hard to tell what these novellas have in common with the others. They seem to take place in a different country and during a different era. But that connecting thread is what makes this world special, anyway. I think I caught a few references to the events of The Hallowed Hunt, but that book didn't leave a lasting impression on me, so it's hard to be sure.

I hope Bujold keeps releasing stories in this world. While I'm hungry for more novels, I'm more than happy to devour to occasional surprise novella. Especially when it stars a character I'm already familiar with. In the meantime, it's probably worth finally tracking down the rest of her Sharing Knife series.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more