Fantasy Novella Review: The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold

Note:  This book was acquired as an e-ARC provided by its publisher in advance of its physical release date.  I promise this will not affect my review.  

The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Orphans of Raspay is the 7th novella in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Penric & Desdemona" series, which is set in the same "World of the Five Gods" as some of her novels.  The series has always been one of the more fun but less essential parts of Bujold's oeuvre - with the series' appeal coming from the witty (internal) banter between main protagonist Penric and his demon Desdemona which the series combines with interesting interactions with Bujold's Five Gods.  At its best, the novellas can be really fun and creative (Penric's Mission, Mira's Last Dance), at their worst they're forgettable (The Prisoner of Limnos).

So I'd wanted to check out the latest novella eventually when it came out last year (preferably in audiobook as I'd enjoyed most of this series) but didn't have the chance till it showed up on NetGalley.  And well, it's easily in the more forgettable of entries, alas, not really doing enough to justify its own existence - it's fine and never in bad taste, but it never adds anything we've never seen before or has any of the wittier moments that are in some of Bujold's best works - including this series.


Quick Plot Summary:  Penric and Desdemona are undercover on a ship coming home from a task from the Archdivine of Orbas, when Penric's ship is boarded by pirates.  Unfortunately, since sailors regularly think having a sorcerer on board is bad luck (and throw them overboard), he can't simply reveal his presence to try to escape.  Instead he finds himself taken prisoner alongside two orphan girls, with no one else to turn to for help.  Soon Penric finds himself determined to free not just himself, but the two orphan girls, who seem to have been placed in his path by the Bastard.  But to pull it off, he'll have to deal with not only pirates, but the fact that the only people who can help get him home are just as likely to throw him overboard if he reveals who he is......

Thoughts: The best Penric & Desdemona novels feature us learning something new about Penric's powers, or Desdemona's past lives and generally feature witty banter between them as they try and use these to get out whatever situation Penric finds himself in.  The 2nd trilogy of novellas (Beginning with Penric's Mission and ending with The Prisoner of Limnos) also adds in a second main character in Nikys, whose interactions with Penric only improve upon these aspects of the story (and who is a fine character in her own right, though I didn't love what Bujold did with her in Prisoner).  And in a few of these stories we get direct interactions with the gods, which add more to this world.

The Orphans of Raspay has basically none of that whatsoever.  There's no funny dialogue between Penric and Desdemona, no real secondary characters (the eponymous orphans are basically mcguffins) nothing particularly interesting revealed about Penric's powers or Des' past, or even any direct new interactions with the gods.  It's....fine, and all of it makes sense - although the ending is very much a deus ex machina, even if it works - but there's nothing new here to make you go "oh, that's cool" and there's nothing funny here to make you laugh, and the attempt to pull at your heartstrings doesn't work too well because the orphans are so generic and without personality (their dead mother has more characterization, and again, she's never alive as part of the story).  The story feels like one of the adventures Penric has undoubtedly had off-page between prior novellas which weren't notable enough to write about.....so I'm not sure why this one was written.