I super-hated the third Chalion book, so I didn’t really rush out to read Lois Bujold’s Penric novellas, which are set in the same world (though in a different country and featuring different characters); but people said good things about them, and I’ve been liking the novellas I’ve been reading, so I figured I’d give them a go.
They’re pleasantly enjoyable books. Penric is a young lad who unexpectedly finds himself possessed by/of a demon. He then has a series of adventures—solving a murder, hunting down a shaman, doing some light spycraft, and engaging in a jailbreak. The novella format works well for letting Bujold tell relatively small, direct stories without needing to pad them out with a whole bunch of complications or an elaborate B-plot or whatever. (It really is nice that the e-book world has let writers free of the length constraints around paper books, so they can tell stories that are whatever length makes sense for the story, rather than always having to cram everything into novel length.)
If there’s a criticism, it’s that they really aren’t more than pleasantly enjoyable. They’re not brilliant, they aren’t breaking new ground, they’re just little light adventure stories that go down easy. But that’s not really a failing on their part, so much as it’s a failure of the Hugo organizers and voters for instituting a stupid “Best Series” award and giving it to this series.
Recommended, but don’t expect one of the Best Series of all-time.
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