FWIW ... please forgive the ramble, if you're not in the mood! :-) ... Bujold pivoted a bit from the first three novels (especially the first two) in the World Of The Five Gods when she invented Penric's branch. Not only is his niche hundreds of years before the first two novels and hundreds of years after the third, she seems to have actively wanted a protagonist she could deploy repeatedly, yet in complete-unto-themselves stories of varied lengths (so far: many short stories, several novellas, one full novel), which readers could enjoy without knowing anything of the other stories. Penric, like later Miles, becomes someone whom his authorities can send willy-nilly into weird and challenging situations to sort them out. But where Miles usually faces political and military situations, Penric faces anything that can go wrong -- including social, health, and metaphysical questions that never found a place in the Vorkosigan books.
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FWIW ... please forgive the ramble, if you're not in the mood! :-) ... Bujold pivoted a bit from the first three novels (especially the first two) in the World Of The Five Gods when she invented Penric's branch. Not only is his niche hundreds of years before the first two novels and hundreds of years after the third, she seems to have actively wanted a protagonist she could deploy repeatedly, yet in complete-unto-themselves stories of varied lengths (so far: many short stories, several novellas, one full novel), which readers could enjoy without knowing anything of the other stories. Penric, like later Miles, becomes someone whom his authorities can send willy-nilly into weird and challenging situations to sort them out. But where Miles usually faces political and military situations, Penric faces anything that can go wrong -- including social, health, and metaphysical questions that never found a place in the Vorkosigan books.