Penric takes a chance...
Two intractable problems are brought to the door of sorcerer Learned Penric of Vilnoc and his Temple demon Desdemona. Cinar Camurat, a mutilated Cedonian cavalry captain, has traveled two thousand sea miles to Penric for aid. Iva of Bita, a secret hedge sorceress, lies dying in her Orban hill village, and wants no aid at all.
Penric and Desdemona know well the hazards of medicine and magic, but their greatest puzzle may lodge in the tangle of hopes and fears in human and demonic hearts.

My Review:

In a recent (mis)adventure, Penric managed to get himself gored by a demonic ox. These things happen when you are a Learned Divine of the Fifth God, the Lord Bastard, the master of all disasters out of season. Penric seems to be one of his most favored – or possibly one of his favorite playthings. When the deity you serve is the God of Chaos, the Lord of both chance and mischance, his godly favor often demonstrates the reasons why “may you live in interesting times” is every bit as much of a curse as it is a blessing.

In the World of the Five Gods, demons are not “demons” the way that we think of them. Demons are spirits with an independent existence – and soul – but no body. They achieve sentience by receiving some divine spark – or something like that – and then moving up the evolutionary chain from body to body, from insect to animal to human, gaining skills, experience and maturity as they go.

It’s not body-snatching. It’s not usually possession. It’s sharing. It’s partnership. Penric ought to know as he shares his body with the demon Desdemona, who represents the collective experience of the twelve demon-riders who came before him. All of them female which gives him an entirely new perspective on pretty much everything – and has for the past 25 years. Ever since he first agreed to host Desdemona in Penric’s Demon.

But it’s Penric’s whole adult life, a much different life than the one he originally imagined for himself.

This 16th story in the Hugo Award winning series is about another young man, this time a former cavalry officer, in considerably more desperate straits than Penric was, looking for a cure for his blindness and finding a life that he never imagined for himself, just as Penric once did.

Cinar Camurat was blinded by an enemy while he was a prisoner of war. His life, as he knew it, is over. And, quite likely, his life, period. Once he runs out of hope, he’ll put himself out of his misery – and it’s obvious to everyone around him that he’s hanging on by his fingernails.

Penric, OTOH, has a problem much like the one he walked into himself all those years ago. A hedge-witch (an unsanctioned sorcerer) is dying of cancer. Her demon is untrained and doesn’t know how to throw off the chaos she generates safely so as not to let it build up in her rider. But her demon is partially trained, and the temple always needs more demons for waiting candidates.

Not that any of those candidates can reach Penric in time, just as he was the only person available to take his demon when Desdemona’s previous rider died – of old age – on a remote path.

Cinar needs a future. The demon needs a rider. There is no time left for either of them. Unless they choose to walk their future path together, a road not seen, and seldom taken. But hopefully the right one for them both.

If the Lord Bastard takes them under his care, and gives them times that are just interesting enough.

Escape Rating A-: This series is always fun. And it’s always fun to see how Penric and his family are doing and just how misadventurous his current adventure turns out to be. Meaning that I picked this up the moment I saw it existed and dove into it with a grateful sigh.

One of the things I love about this series, and about the World of the Five Gods in which it is set, is that the whole religion/theology angle is well-thought out, actually works, and doesn’t make the reader think of any current real world analogies.

Not that Penric doesn’t have faith in his god and his god’s actions, but that Penric has met his god and spoken with him and knows for certain that his god’s acts – and the acts of the other gods – are real and have real, obvious and obviously directly attributable effects on their real world.

Penric and his god are also very well matched, in that the Lord Bastard is a chaos avatar, and so is Penric. And it seems as if that characteristic is a real part of Penric’s personality and not something imposed by his god. Not that the Lord Bastard isn’t a die-hard enabler of such behavior, but the behavior was already there. Penric just has more scope for it as a Temple Sorcerer than he did as the second son of a local landowner when he was just starting out.

The story, as so many of Penric’s stories are, is a story about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. A story about leaping and hoping the net will appear. Of taking a chance and knowing it will make something happen – even if that something is less than ideal. Penric is all about pushing the envelope and seeing what happens when he sees what’s outside the corner.

In this case the story is also a reminder of both Penric’s own origin story AND his predisposition to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

It was also fun to have another story that centered around Penric’s work as a Temple Sorcerer rather than on his family. There have been a few of those close together – although not the most recent book, Testimony of Mute Things, and it’s nice to have the balance back.

Both of those things being said, that means that the story has a familiar feel to it, as Penric has seen and done similar things and had similar adventures. Which is why this is an A- book instead of higher.

What makes this entry in the series a bit different is wrapped as tightly around Cinar as the badges around his eyes. It’s his situation that carries the heartbreak, and he’s at the end of his psychological rope and isn’t sure whether it’s worth hanging on. So even though Penric’s solution is dependent on this world’s magic, Cinar’s feelings and responses to his situation feel universal.

That Penric’s solution to Cinar’s problems is going to create a whole lot of change and chaos for his own life and his own God’s Order is just par for Penric’s, and the Lord Bastard’s, course.

If you’re already one of Penric and Desdemona’s many fans, this is a fun entry in the series. If this epic in scope but not epically long fantasy series sounds like it just MIGHT be your jam, start at the beginning with Penric’s Demon and prepare yourself for a terrific reading binge.

I’ll be over here, looking forward to the next book in the series, whenever it may appear!