Bite-size Bujold

Aug 2021
Mira's Last Dance / The Prisoner of Limnos / The Orphans of Raspay - Lois McMaster Bujold – Spectrum Literary Agency, Inc., 2017 / 2017 / 2019
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Now that the Penric and Desdemona series has reached ten episodes, it is fairly clear what Bujold is about. Her inspiration is evidently the early Swords and Sorcery novellas of Fritz Leiber and others, where each story is linked to the others by a shared setting and some recurring characters. The problem with this model of publishing is that it leads to static characterisation; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, for example, change hardly at all from one story to the next. To be fair, that is not quite true of this series - Penric's relationships do evolve a little as it progresses, but not nearly as much as I would like.
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