Demon Daughter is the twelfth story in Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy "Penric & Desdemona" series. As I've said before, I've enjoyed the series - which focuses upon the unexpected combination of the inquisitive Penric & the ten-lived demon Desdemona in Bujold's World of the Five Gods - but have found the later installments hit or miss. Pen & Des's interactions through their mind and verbal talk are always fun/interesting, but at this point Bujold seems to alternate between stories that are interesting through new character developments and ones that are just more of the same and don't offer anything new.
Demon Daughter does offer some new character developments, although it does feel a little bit like a not fully fleshed out idea. The story focuses upon Pen & Des, along with Nikys, as they encounter a 7 year old girl - around the age of their own daughter - who was thrown overboard from a ship when she contracted a demon. Even more notably, the demon inside her is essentially a child itself, having existed only within a rat before her for the barest of moments, and as such is so pure that Des takes a maternal instinct towards her...which leads to internal conflict with Pen. As a story it's a bit heartwarming at times and the character relationships all work...but it also feels like a story on rails to a predestined end from early on, which takes some of the intrigue off of it.
Quick Plot Summary:
Penric, Desdemona, and Nikys are trying to manage their own household and their two children, plus their own recent heartbreak, when they are given an urgent assignment by the Bastard's Order: investigate a little girl in a nearby village who washed onshore and began seemingly magically setting fires and screaming in the Roknari language.
When they get to the village they discover Oda, a 7 year old girl who went overboard from a ship, and who has indeed contracted a demon....one so new and pure like Pen & Des have never seen. And as they take Oda in and try to teach her control and send word to try to find her parents, Pen & Des begin to come to conflict like never before over the fate of this little girl...and the fate of the child demon within her....
Thoughts: As I've mentioned before, the Penric novellas tend to work better when they introduce a new element or character development - Penric the mentor, Penric dealing with a teenage saint, Penric dealing with an assassin misusing demons - vs simply just showing Penric using his skills to get out of situations...as the latter is kind of played out by now. And here we do see something new: Penric not just the mentor, but Pen & Des (and Nikys) as parents, dealing with an unexpected new third child and her baby demon. And that works rather well and is very enjoyable as we see how Pen, who is obtuse often to adults in his language, deals with Oda, a little girl who deserves better than being thrown overboard, and the demon within and how he trains her and deals with incorporating her into their family, language and demon difficulties and all.
At the same time, the story's only conflict comes from Pen, Nikys, and Des taking Oda and her demon to the Saint of the Bastard where the God may kill the demon. Pen & Nikys are conflicted especially because depending upon whether the demon is taken it may also affect whether Oda can ever go back to her parents (who believe the Bastard and his demons are an evil false god)....and Des is conflicted with Pen like never before because she feels maternal to this demon who is so pure and has never done anything wrong. And like that's utterly fair....except this conflict can't really ever go anywhere because Pen & Des obviously are going to make it to the Saint (and do so with little trouble) and any reader will guess what decision the Bastard will take and what will be the end fate of Oda's demon. It just feels like the conflict is on rails and that really takes a lot of the intrigue out of this story.
The end result is a solid Penric story, one which yet again could serve as a series finale of Bujold wants, but one that doesn't give the full great satisfaction of some of the earlier ones.
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