Penric and the Bandit - Lois McMaster Bujold

[sholio]

New Penric book! I stumbled across it by accident (I think Amazon recommended it to me; I didn't know we were going to have a new one so soon) and really enjoyed it.


I was a little wary of the outside POV with none of the other regulars around, but I ended up really enjoying it. I didn't find Roz all that interesting as a character, tbh, but I had a lot of fun with his impressions of Penric, and it was also really fun to get the occasional dips into Penric's POV to find out how much of that was Penric deliberately feeding him impressions and also how much of the bandit side of things Penric was aware of. And the mountain setting and ruined temple was a good time. I guessed that Penric was after something that Roz wouldn't consider treasure, and I'm glad he managed to salvage his books in the final fight!

My Adelis-loving heart enjoyed Penric's recurring reflections on just how useful a military tactician would've been on this particular mission, lmao. (Actually I think he spends more page time thinking about Adelis in this book than his wife. Though Penric rushing off with the letter from Nikys at the end was VERY cute! Also very cute to learn that he has officially adopted the girl from the last book and considers her one of his own now. <3)

And this set me off rereading the other recent Penric books, though completely out of order - I wanted to read the first of the Nikys and Adelis ones (Penric's Mission - still excellent!), and parts of Assassins of Thasalon, and now I'm reading Physicians of Vilnoc because I don't remember it very well. The little rereading spree also reminded me that I never actually finished Prisoner of Limnos, and I can't remember why in particular (I think I was bouncing off the Penric and Nikys angst in that one?) but I should probably go back and finish it sometime, because I had forgotten that I hadn't read all of the earlier books in the series!

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Thanks for the heads up!

[sholio]

Happy to help!

[hamsterwoman]

Haven't read this one yet but also saw it on Amazon (for one, that algorithm has actually proven useful instead of recommending me book 1s of series I've already read). I still haven't read the previous one (though I did know about that one), but hearing this:

"Actually I think he spends more page time thinking about Adelis in this book than his wife"

- makes me want to move both up the TBR pile, haha

[sholio]

Ahahaha I definitely don't want to give you TOO heightened expectations (it's just a few offhand references) but it did make me really happy. :D Still hoping we'll get another book with Adelis one of these days!

[chomiji]

I love these books! This latest one was a fun little romp, but the main point of most of the books has been to grow Penric (even those he's now 40 or so?), and there wasn't an awful lot of that here.

Personally. I'd love to see some more of the two girls from Raspay.

[sholio]

Penric definitely is fairly static in this book, it's true! Weirdly, I didn't feel like Roz seemed to evolve a whole lot either, even though the entire point is his character growth. The plot was terrific fun, though - I think it was nice to get a book that wasn't particularly heavy or sad.

I would love to see the Raspay girls come back in a future book!

[wyld_dandelyon]

Oooh! I've got to get it!!!!!

Thanks!

[sholio]

I hope you enjoy it if you do! I found this one quite fun.