Penric and his demon meet a lady
Jun. 3rd, 2026 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileTo keep my brain from falling out of my ears while I am in packing hell–and so I could return it to its owner before I have to move all my worldly possessions–these past few days I read the next collection of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas, Penric’s Travels.
This very delightful set of novels involves our hero Penric, now 30, traveling to the intrigue-riddled nation of Cedonia on a spy mission and promptly getting in a LOT of trouble. Getting in a lot of trouble is something of a national pastime in Cedonia, and Penric quickly ends up getting thrown in with a cranky former general who has been unceremoniously tall-poppied and his widowed sister Nikys. Nikys is great and the thread pulling the three novellas in this volume together are the slow, complicated courtship that develops between her and Pen, while each individual novella gives us a different exciting rescue mission to threaten all our characters’ lives in fun and interesting ways. This set of stories also has lots of playing with gender, as Bujold adds an interesting new dimension to the old Bonny Prince Charlie-ass trick of men escaping dangerous situations by dressing up as women: Penric has the personalities of ten real women living in his head as facets of his (also now female) chaos demon Desdemona, whom he can draw on to help him perform more elaborate gender-bendy ruses than merely wrapping himself up in big skirts and hoping nobody looks too closely. The second novella features him taking on the persona of a retiring courtesan, which throws Nikys a bit, and in the third one we get some playtime with Learned Ruchia, Desdemona’s most recent rider, who was a spy.
Overall this was a perfect balance of funny, charming, romantic bits and HIGH-OCTANE BLOODY HEIST ADVENTURES for me, as someone who tends to bounce off a lot of “cozy” or romantic stuff. Bujold’s relationship writing is great; she never sacrifices either serious character development or life-threatening military intrigue to any kind of paint-by-numbers fluff. Nikys is also a very practical woman, and I do like it when practical women are properly appreciated by intelligent love interests who don’t treat them like being practical must mean they are boring and stupid. (This seems like a low bar but it does appear to be a powerful fantasy for a lot of heterosexual women: A guy who appreciates the stuff you can do as a sign that you are an intelligent and competent adult worthy of respect, not just as convenience that if you can do stuff, then you can do stuff for him.) (Personally I became a gay instead but I understand that’s not an option for everybody.)
I am hoping I can borrow the next collection quickly once my move is over!
This very delightful set of novels involves our hero Penric, now 30, traveling to the intrigue-riddled nation of Cedonia on a spy mission and promptly getting in a LOT of trouble. Getting in a lot of trouble is something of a national pastime in Cedonia, and Penric quickly ends up getting thrown in with a cranky former general who has been unceremoniously tall-poppied and his widowed sister Nikys. Nikys is great and the thread pulling the three novellas in this volume together are the slow, complicated courtship that develops between her and Pen, while each individual novella gives us a different exciting rescue mission to threaten all our characters’ lives in fun and interesting ways. This set of stories also has lots of playing with gender, as Bujold adds an interesting new dimension to the old Bonny Prince Charlie-ass trick of men escaping dangerous situations by dressing up as women: Penric has the personalities of ten real women living in his head as facets of his (also now female) chaos demon Desdemona, whom he can draw on to help him perform more elaborate gender-bendy ruses than merely wrapping himself up in big skirts and hoping nobody looks too closely. The second novella features him taking on the persona of a retiring courtesan, which throws Nikys a bit, and in the third one we get some playtime with Learned Ruchia, Desdemona’s most recent rider, who was a spy.
Overall this was a perfect balance of funny, charming, romantic bits and HIGH-OCTANE BLOODY HEIST ADVENTURES for me, as someone who tends to bounce off a lot of “cozy” or romantic stuff. Bujold’s relationship writing is great; she never sacrifices either serious character development or life-threatening military intrigue to any kind of paint-by-numbers fluff. Nikys is also a very practical woman, and I do like it when practical women are properly appreciated by intelligent love interests who don’t treat them like being practical must mean they are boring and stupid. (This seems like a low bar but it does appear to be a powerful fantasy for a lot of heterosexual women: A guy who appreciates the stuff you can do as a sign that you are an intelligent and competent adult worthy of respect, not just as convenience that if you can do stuff, then you can do stuff for him.) (Personally I became a gay instead but I understand that’s not an option for everybody.)
I am hoping I can borrow the next collection quickly once my move is over!
