Book #42 of 2016: Penric's Demon / Penric and the Shaman

Penric's Demon and Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rating: Loved, Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I love Lois McMaster Bujold's writing. I even loved her author's note -- her tone of voice comes through so well, and it's so pleasant to read.

The first book did something I never thought a story would be able to do: It made me wish I was possessed by a demon. (How silly does that statement sound!) But in the story's world, having a demon was like multiple personality disorder, but the other people in your head are real and quite old -- full of interesting information, powers, and stories. Seems like you'd never get lonely if you had a demon in you. The story followed how Penric got the demon inside him, and the early days of living with her.

In the second book, set ten years later, Penric was settled into his role. He was sent out to assist another church official in hunting down a criminal, and through that we met the titular Shaman.

Though Amazon reviews disagree with me, I liked the first book a lot better than the second. For some reason I kept getting the other two main characters (Oswyl and Inglis) mixed up -- maybe I have trouble with multiple vowel-names? :P Or it's possible I'm just really distracted right now, since I'm moving in less than a week.

I suspect, if I compared Penric and the Shaman to the average book I read instead of to Penric's Demon, I would have given it a Loved rating instead.

Though Amazon lists these as individual books, they're actually novellas, so I'm counting the two together as one.

*pulls hair out* UGH!

I got a call from the apartment complex I'm moving in to. "We have good news and bad news..." That is NOT what you want to hear from a place you're moving to.

The good news: My apartment is completely finished and ready to move in to.

They opened with that news. Which is good news, but what could be the bad news compared to that?

The building hasn't passed the town inspection and they can't move residents in.

Gods above...

They offered to move me into a different apartment in the complex for a week, and they're going to pay for movers to move me in to my intended apartment once it does pass. So that's something, but I won't be able to unpack anything for at least a week. And I'm going to have to move twice.

Lesser annoying thing: The temporary apartment is in the second floor, with no elevator in the building. My knees ache going up only a couple steps. :( And I'm going to have to move my computer and cat myself and things like the cat box... things I don't want the movers to do.

Sigh.