Last weekend, I downloaded “Demon Daughter,” Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest Penric and Desdemona story. One of these days, I will find the time to read it. Meanwhile, I have a Kindle with something to look forward to on it.

Cicadas

May. 19th, 2021 09:14 pm
I have seen a few seventeen year cicadas lately, and expect to see many more. In fact, I think I saw one dead one on the sidewalk a number of weeks ago; if so, he or she probably emerged too early.

I do remember the previous year of the cicada brood, when I went to Balticon to see, among others, the great Lois McMaster Bujold; my cycle of Bujold in Haiku was printed in the convention booklet. Ms. Bujold has said that her experience of the cicadas back then was part of the inspiration for the Sharing Knife series, because the cicadas got her thinking: what if the heroes can’t just slay the monster, or the evil overlord, and be done? What if new monsters keep emerging from the soil, so the monster slayers have to keep up their vigilance year after year, generation after generation, knowing that one failure could result in a monster consuming the whole world?

The cicadas should be credited for their contribution to literature, if nothing else.
I have a new Kindle, since there were problems with the old one, and I have downloaded and read “The Orphans of Raspay,” the latest of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric and Desdemona stories. It is well done, as one would expect, although perhaps not the author’s absolute best. Penric is captured by pirates, who, as he is a sorcerer partnered with a chaos demon, come to regret it. Being the nice guy he is, he doesn’t merely try to escape, and to unleash chaos on the pirates, but to rescue others as well, including the orphans of the title.

The novella has much less squick than a story of people being held prisoner by pirates might have had.
Before heading to work this morning, I successfully downloaded Knife Children, a sequel to Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, to my Kindle Fire. Then I dutifully went in to work, and now have other duties to delay my reading the new book.

Sometimes adulting stinks.
If you didn’t know already, Lois McMaster Bujold has a new novella out, “Flowers of Vashnoi,” and it is good (of course; I said it was by LMB). It takes place on Barrayar, and is told from Ekaterin’s point of view. Hasten to download it, if you have not done so already.

If you are already familiar with Bujold’s work, or with the Vorkosigan series, this isn’t the place to begin. Begin with Falling Free and Shards of Honor.

I can’t resist quoting a little from “Flowers of Vashnoi”:

“But if one embeds a lesson in a lie, and the children find out it’s a lie, they’re likely to throw out the lesson as well. I mean, logically. They couldn’t trust anything at that point.”

“Mm.” Ekaterin wondered if that explained something about adolescence.
It's snowing today; I remember chatting with a friend yesterday. She warned me about the snow, and I said I should be used to snow, having grown up further north and at a higher altitude. She warned me, though, that drivers around here might not be so used to snow, so I should be careful of them. That was a good point.

I have finished listening to Shards of Honor on a set of tapes formerly owned by Meg Justus, may she rest in peace. I thought it well done; there were two participants, Carol Cowan and Michael Hanson of the Reader's Chair, but they managed to make more than two characters sound distinctive.
Hurray! I managed to download and read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Prisoner of Limnos this weekend. For the benefit of anyone who doesn't already now, it's the latest Penric and Desdemona novella -- it may even qualify as a short novel -- and it follows "Mira's Last Dance."

It's late, and I'm not going to attempt a detailed review, but of course the tale is good. It's by Bujold, after all.
I just downloaded Lois McMaster Bujold's new novella, Penric's Fox. Sad to say, I have a job that cuts into my reading time, but I hope to settle down and read more than the first few pages soon.

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