Fantasy Novella Review: Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Knot of Shadows is the latest edition in Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric & Desdemona series, and the latest chronologically in the series (which sometimes comes out with midquels instead of sequels).  The series is generally fairly fun, featuring sorcerer "Pen" and his demon "Des", as they get into adventures and situations regarding the Five Gods.  The last work in the series, the first novel length story - The Assassins of Thasalon - was very good, making it so I dove right into this one immediately after finishing it. 

Knot of Shadows unfortunately is one of the lesser installments in the series, not really bringing us anything new.  Instead, the story brings us a mystery that calls back all the way back to The Curse of Chalion, the first book in her World of the Five Gods.  And it's fine, and Pen, Des, and apprentice Alixtra remain solid characters, but there just really isn't much substance here to really keep my interest, as some of the better recent Penric stories have done.  

Note:  I read this as an audiobook and the reader is as usual very good.  If you are looking to read this, the audio format is always a good choice, as it is for the rest of this series.  

Quick Plot Summary:  When Penric & Desdemona are called to examine a strange "corpse" found in the harbor - albeit a corpse that has, after a day of death, begun moving again, they find themselves involved in one of the rarer acts of the White God:  that of Death Miracle, in which one person seeks justice by offering their soul to the Bastard in exchange for the death of someone who has escaped heinous justice.  And so Pen & Des are forced to search the city for the other dead body....before it too starts walking around and causing problems.....

Thoughts:  Knot of Shadows features Pen, Des, and their apprentice sorceress Alixtra (from the last book) investigating something we haven't seen since The Curse of Chalion: Death Magic/Miracle.  And it's kind of interesting to see that back here again, especially as the description of that act in that book didn't fully gel with how demons would be fleshed out in later Five Gods books, and Pes investigating things is always at least someone entertaining.  

Still that's really all that there is here, especially since the investigation is known from the start to be searching really for another dead body, rather than some alive perpetrator.  Bujold tries to flesh things out by throwing in a side mystery and quest for Penric to get over, but again there just really isn't much here.  I like Pen and Des, and some of their side characters, but this book is mainly just them (Alixtra doesn't do much) and well....I need more than just some occasional banter from them to really keep my interest once we're 11 stories in, and there really isn't much else here.  So yeah this is mainly for diehards of the series only, and you can probably skip this one if there's another better one to come later, like you could with the last story in the series I felt this way about (The Orphans of Raspay).