Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightknightie) wrote2026-05-05 07:52 am
brightknightie) wrote2026-05-05 07:52 am
Entry tags:
Darksight Dare (Penric & Desdemona #16) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Yesterday, by coincidence, I stumbled across the news that Lois McMaster Bujold had a new "The World of the Five Gods" e-book novella coming out... yesterday! Darksight Dare, the 16th Penric & Desdemona story. See it on Amazon. Also, the next (fourth) hardcover compilation of the e-books comes out... today! Penric's Intrigues (containing "The Assassins of Thasalon" and "Knot of Shadows"). See it on Amazon.
Darksight Dare is set immediately after The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, so this is in the era of Pen's life when he's got himself (vocation, relationships, etc.) mostly figured out, just barely in time for his kids to start figuring out theirs.
I hugely enjoy Bujold's "The World of the Five Gods" (formerly "The Chalion Saga" for where the first two were set). Varying by setting, they're either pseudo-medieval or pseudo-Renaissance, and the fantasy elements exist within the cultures' theologies, which are very "high" (that is, not classical myth demigods running around physically in people's lives, but more metaphorizing real-world modern understandings of God). While of course some of the stories are better than others -- and the re-routing from the first three novels to the Pen novellas leaves me sometimes longing for the more novels of the original vision we might have had if the muse had moved Bujold that way -- every story has something to say that I find worth listening to.
Darksight Dare is set immediately after The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, so this is in the era of Pen's life when he's got himself (vocation, relationships, etc.) mostly figured out, just barely in time for his kids to start figuring out theirs.
I hugely enjoy Bujold's "The World of the Five Gods" (formerly "The Chalion Saga" for where the first two were set). Varying by setting, they're either pseudo-medieval or pseudo-Renaissance, and the fantasy elements exist within the cultures' theologies, which are very "high" (that is, not classical myth demigods running around physically in people's lives, but more metaphorizing real-world modern understandings of God). While of course some of the stories are better than others -- and the re-routing from the first three novels to the Pen novellas leaves me sometimes longing for the more novels of the original vision we might have had if the muse had moved Bujold that way -- every story has something to say that I find worth listening to.
no subject
I hope you enjoy!
no subject
I purchased the ebook immediately. I will order the hardback compilation from my local bookshop the next time I'm in its vicinity.
(Bujold is one of the authors I signed up for Amazon to send me notices of upcoming new works, but they never seem to send those notices until well after the works come out. Frankly, that's the one thing I've actually considered maybe building myself an AI agent for outside work: once a week, search these specific sites for announcements of upcoming new releases by these specific authors, and email me a report with links each time you find one.)