Finished reading: Penric’s Demon: A Fantasy Novella in the World of the Five Gods (Curse of Chalion Series) by Lois McMaster Bujold 📚

I heard about Bujold on an episode of the Coode Street Podcast (found Coode Street because they had Jo Walton on, talking about her history of the Hugos). Anyway, in this episode, the hosts were talking about the ongoing question, does SFF focus world building to the detriment of characterization, which I didn’t know was a common critique of SFF (“name one memorable scifi character”). In the course of discussion, Gary Wolfe mentions Lois McMaster Bujold as an SFF writer who does characters well, so I looked her up on Libby, where her novella Penric’s Demon was available as a 4 hour audiobook, not too big a commitment, so I went for it.

Before I get to characters, world-building and whatever else, though, I’ll use the occasion of finishing another book to return to my question about what I’m after with books (reading books, maybe trying to write a book?) as I did with (Farthing)[https://ethancowan.com/2026/09/01/how-do-books-work.html]. This time I’m testing out the word ‘review’ as a way to think what kind of writing I might like to do, because on another episode of Coode Street, I heard them recommend an essay by Paul Kincaid called “a taxonomy of reviewing” which said, “reviewing refers to any piece of writing about a text that isn’t written by the author of the text itself.”

By this broad, loose definition, reviewing can cover anything from a blurb to a monograph. And that’s fair enough, because these are all ways we have of writing about creative texts. They are not all critical ways, they are not all analytical, they are not all objective, but they are all to some degree an outside eye upon the text in question.

So, a review of Penric’s Demon, not especially critical or analytical or objective or even interesting, just some words about someone else’s text.

Penric is a young, small-town lord riding a horse down a road in a fantasy world with green grass and blue skies. His older brother went off to become a soldier, but ended up dying in camp, from an illness, not even fighting. Pen’s father also died before the story started, so it would seem a certain kind of masculinity in Pen’s family is doomed.

Pen is engaged to a girl, about to be married, in fact, riding down the road to meet his betrothed when he comes to a crossroads. An older woman has fallen from a horse and lays dying. He wants to help. Even as she’s dying, she likes the look of him and says as her last words, “Accept it,” which he later learns means, accept the demon. He does, unconsciously, and wakes to find he has become the 13th (or so) person to have taken on this demon, meaning the demon lives in and through him now.

He can talk to the demon, and it talks back through his mouth, in the various voices of the previous hosts, all of whom were women.

“So are you 12 persons or 1?” Pen asked. “Yes,” said the Ruchia voice.

He gives them all a name, Desdemona.

So, it seems to be a story about the formation of a man, who is going to learn how to be in the world with the guidance of 12 different female life histories inside him.

Oh, and death. Seems like death is going to keep coming up.

ok, so that’s just a synopsis or… Not saying bad or good or even how it’s related to much else. Just letting myself be light and not try too hard to make anything happen.