Penric books, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Mar. 17th, 2021 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read the books Penric's Progress and Penric's Travels, one after the other, almost like I used to before This Year happened.
... a year of nine months not leaving the house, three months doing a weekly Exercise Walk, and a year solid between last time I went to a supermarket and last week going in the bread shop. A year of nothing to do but read, and I read I think 4 books.
Then pretty much this month I caught up on F&SF magazine, almost caught up on Uncanny, and read two books in a row.
They're collections of three novellas each, which suited me very well. None of that nibbling feeling from reading short stories but the plot moved on apace and the characters got introduced and explored at a speed I liked.
I like these books very well.
The intro to the first one says ideally to just go read them from the beginning and read about them ie the intro after you're done. So if you want to do that, dont read under the cut.
They're set in the World of the Five Gods, and the intro explains Bujold wanted to write about a very powerful magic user. In that world demons jump in to people, but they're not always the ones driving. A human can stay in charge of their demon, or, as Penric does, make friends with theirs. And a demon can do a Lot of different magical things, but with some pretty clear boundaries and theological limits.
So Penric can knock down mountainsides or attempt to cure cancer, but he cannot kill humans directly and his attempts to cure are limited by both his understanding and the demon's nature. Chaos and destruction is the sort of thing the demon is good at, anything creative is referred to as 'uphill' magic and takes a lot of destruction to power it or balance it out.
They mostly destroy fleas. Bugs. Mice and rats if they have to. One time memorably a seagull. It is theologically permitted and socially useful.
But it does give sorcerers a Reputation.
So what I love about all that is it looks at Chaos and calls it destructive and then thinks, what can we do with that? Not just be judgey and banish every demon. Be precise and apply that destruction as necessary.
A lot of things seem necessary.
But sometimes Penric skims the borders on allowable or explains to himself why what he's doing is okay and you're... very much aware it is more complicated or simpler than he'd like it to be.
So it's interesting. Magic as moral dilemma.
Also we see the unfolding cost to him, emotionally, of having all this power and the weight of expectation on him to use it. He becomes temple trained to learn how to cope with the demon, but he's a little more concerned about human needs when it is time for him to provide spiritual counselling. He does not take oath as a physician. His reasons are heartbreaking. Yet he keeps carrying a medical case and going about doing medicine, just... not the way he was expected to. He's a scholar who loves to learn, but every time that turns into a need to apply it, it's more daunting than it seemed in theory. Yet if he wasn't so voracious for knowledge he'd hit the same points in several stories and just... not be who they needed, and that would eat at him too.
So the magic is flashy and fun, but wrapped up in this very human set of hopes and fears and pressures. It's always personally relevant, it always matters to him if it works, and we even see with the destructive magic getting rid of bugs that he's doing it to help kittens and their little girl owners as much as he is for a need akin to feeding.
Magic has heart, so we care about it.
There's another layer of complication about gender and relationships. The demon absorbs knowledge and experience from every host, and this particular demon has had 12 previous lives, so is ancient and formidable. And kind of cranky. For this demon is old, and has Opinions, and only one mouth to express them with, and that belonging to Penric too. And also this makes things a little confusing, because Penric just inherited a theoretical 12 extra personalities, and has to sort out an internal relationship with them all singly and collectively.
Also, they were all women.
In a world where gods are divided up by gender, at first glance, you'd expect gender roles to be defining A Lot. But it has never been that simple. And continues not to be.
Penric is a pretty young man with long hair, being possessed by a double handful of women. And at first that's like aquiring a bunch of older relatives who keep making suggestions, but as he goes along he's learning from them as much as the demon is learning from him, and on occasion his gender expression gets complicated. Sometimes he's letting the demon be a woman for a while, even if he thinks it's for plot reasons, and that seems to be getting more complicated over time.
Also the women before him had a wide range of professions, including the oldest.
Their skills get him in and out of some Situations.
It's like being a one body adventuring team.
But it also means that any relationship with him is necessarily complex. Arguably necessarily poly. He is in a lifelong relationship to his demon, who may count as ten or twelve beings herself, and yet they are such a tight part of each other they seem to becoming more integrated over time. So you could date Penric, but not leave out all his passengers. But you cannot talk to only one of them at a time ever. So. Complex.
So the story connects him up to people raised in a relationsip with three parents, and shows him another household where marrying one means acquiring the other, and just starts involving complex humans who are going to be able to understand a complex human.
And I like them all so far.
Also, when the story gets a bit too convenient or pointed, this is conveniently because The Gods Did It. So it is not just the author making a point, it is the other person necessarily in a relationship of some intense sort with Penric and many others, their god, the Bastard. Also the Son, Father and Daughter put in appearances. Penric's relationship with the Mother gets a bit complicated. In general this is a world where the gods are, as they are believed to be, involved with everyone and everything. One big theologically complex family.
But one key to the series is
they have no hands but ours.
Gods can belp, but we are the help. They'll send the right person. But since people get choices and can send ourselves elsewhere, sometimes the help does not arrive. Or arrives having bounced through rather a lot of story already, a bit the worse for wear.
So it ends up being about connecting to and caring about ... everyone? For the gods, everyone. For Penric, quite possibly everyone. He tries to give spiritual counsel to people who just tried to kill him.
... at several points he needs his friends just to tell him to lie down and concentrate on not dying.
... there's always so much more to do.
But all that caring about people becomes being cared about by excellent people as well.
So the stories have heart and spirit
and plot and twists
and give you a tour of a wonderfully full world
and, sometimes, are funny.
Sometiems tragic, but they leave things better than they found them.
So now I have an idea of what I've been looking for in stories, because much of it was here. People care about people, and help them, and it works out as improving things. The story never stalls out at stating a problem, there's always movement towards solutions or at least making things better. Even when terrible things happen, and they do, awful injuries and life changing ones, that doesnt just end the story for the injured. People get chances and choices and dont get dropped off the end of the story, especially not for being the wrong demographic now.
And the use of power is examined and interrogated, never just handwaved Because Hero. Every time you wonder if they really did a hero thing just there, they wonder too.
It makes me remember why I like Bujold's stories.
I might go reread a bunch.
... a year of nine months not leaving the house, three months doing a weekly Exercise Walk, and a year solid between last time I went to a supermarket and last week going in the bread shop. A year of nothing to do but read, and I read I think 4 books.
Then pretty much this month I caught up on F&SF magazine, almost caught up on Uncanny, and read two books in a row.
They're collections of three novellas each, which suited me very well. None of that nibbling feeling from reading short stories but the plot moved on apace and the characters got introduced and explored at a speed I liked.
I like these books very well.
The intro to the first one says ideally to just go read them from the beginning and read about them ie the intro after you're done. So if you want to do that, dont read under the cut.
They're set in the World of the Five Gods, and the intro explains Bujold wanted to write about a very powerful magic user. In that world demons jump in to people, but they're not always the ones driving. A human can stay in charge of their demon, or, as Penric does, make friends with theirs. And a demon can do a Lot of different magical things, but with some pretty clear boundaries and theological limits.
So Penric can knock down mountainsides or attempt to cure cancer, but he cannot kill humans directly and his attempts to cure are limited by both his understanding and the demon's nature. Chaos and destruction is the sort of thing the demon is good at, anything creative is referred to as 'uphill' magic and takes a lot of destruction to power it or balance it out.
They mostly destroy fleas. Bugs. Mice and rats if they have to. One time memorably a seagull. It is theologically permitted and socially useful.
But it does give sorcerers a Reputation.
So what I love about all that is it looks at Chaos and calls it destructive and then thinks, what can we do with that? Not just be judgey and banish every demon. Be precise and apply that destruction as necessary.
A lot of things seem necessary.
But sometimes Penric skims the borders on allowable or explains to himself why what he's doing is okay and you're... very much aware it is more complicated or simpler than he'd like it to be.
So it's interesting. Magic as moral dilemma.
Also we see the unfolding cost to him, emotionally, of having all this power and the weight of expectation on him to use it. He becomes temple trained to learn how to cope with the demon, but he's a little more concerned about human needs when it is time for him to provide spiritual counselling. He does not take oath as a physician. His reasons are heartbreaking. Yet he keeps carrying a medical case and going about doing medicine, just... not the way he was expected to. He's a scholar who loves to learn, but every time that turns into a need to apply it, it's more daunting than it seemed in theory. Yet if he wasn't so voracious for knowledge he'd hit the same points in several stories and just... not be who they needed, and that would eat at him too.
So the magic is flashy and fun, but wrapped up in this very human set of hopes and fears and pressures. It's always personally relevant, it always matters to him if it works, and we even see with the destructive magic getting rid of bugs that he's doing it to help kittens and their little girl owners as much as he is for a need akin to feeding.
Magic has heart, so we care about it.
There's another layer of complication about gender and relationships. The demon absorbs knowledge and experience from every host, and this particular demon has had 12 previous lives, so is ancient and formidable. And kind of cranky. For this demon is old, and has Opinions, and only one mouth to express them with, and that belonging to Penric too. And also this makes things a little confusing, because Penric just inherited a theoretical 12 extra personalities, and has to sort out an internal relationship with them all singly and collectively.
Also, they were all women.
In a world where gods are divided up by gender, at first glance, you'd expect gender roles to be defining A Lot. But it has never been that simple. And continues not to be.
Penric is a pretty young man with long hair, being possessed by a double handful of women. And at first that's like aquiring a bunch of older relatives who keep making suggestions, but as he goes along he's learning from them as much as the demon is learning from him, and on occasion his gender expression gets complicated. Sometimes he's letting the demon be a woman for a while, even if he thinks it's for plot reasons, and that seems to be getting more complicated over time.
Also the women before him had a wide range of professions, including the oldest.
Their skills get him in and out of some Situations.
It's like being a one body adventuring team.
But it also means that any relationship with him is necessarily complex. Arguably necessarily poly. He is in a lifelong relationship to his demon, who may count as ten or twelve beings herself, and yet they are such a tight part of each other they seem to becoming more integrated over time. So you could date Penric, but not leave out all his passengers. But you cannot talk to only one of them at a time ever. So. Complex.
So the story connects him up to people raised in a relationsip with three parents, and shows him another household where marrying one means acquiring the other, and just starts involving complex humans who are going to be able to understand a complex human.
And I like them all so far.
Also, when the story gets a bit too convenient or pointed, this is conveniently because The Gods Did It. So it is not just the author making a point, it is the other person necessarily in a relationship of some intense sort with Penric and many others, their god, the Bastard. Also the Son, Father and Daughter put in appearances. Penric's relationship with the Mother gets a bit complicated. In general this is a world where the gods are, as they are believed to be, involved with everyone and everything. One big theologically complex family.
But one key to the series is
they have no hands but ours.
Gods can belp, but we are the help. They'll send the right person. But since people get choices and can send ourselves elsewhere, sometimes the help does not arrive. Or arrives having bounced through rather a lot of story already, a bit the worse for wear.
So it ends up being about connecting to and caring about ... everyone? For the gods, everyone. For Penric, quite possibly everyone. He tries to give spiritual counsel to people who just tried to kill him.
... at several points he needs his friends just to tell him to lie down and concentrate on not dying.
... there's always so much more to do.
But all that caring about people becomes being cared about by excellent people as well.
So the stories have heart and spirit
and plot and twists
and give you a tour of a wonderfully full world
and, sometimes, are funny.
Sometiems tragic, but they leave things better than they found them.
So now I have an idea of what I've been looking for in stories, because much of it was here. People care about people, and help them, and it works out as improving things. The story never stalls out at stating a problem, there's always movement towards solutions or at least making things better. Even when terrible things happen, and they do, awful injuries and life changing ones, that doesnt just end the story for the injured. People get chances and choices and dont get dropped off the end of the story, especially not for being the wrong demographic now.
And the use of power is examined and interrogated, never just handwaved Because Hero. Every time you wonder if they really did a hero thing just there, they wonder too.
It makes me remember why I like Bujold's stories.
I might go reread a bunch.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-18 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-20 10:02 am (UTC)I figure I should also mention:
a lot of dark stuff happens in these books.
Violence for sure, and mentions of sexual violence, descriptions of injury and dead bodies, murder, the death of children, attempted suicide, self harm, illness and injury.
Also one character's head injury means he cannot read any more, a particular horror to readers.
Listed out that sounds like a whole lot of Do Not Want.
But I didnt find the stories dark. It's something about the focus and the point of view. Even when there are curses they were not about curses, they were about freeing people from them. By courage and kindness and connecting with people.
I liked in Curse of Chalion that even the corrupted evil men were described in terms of how their strengths turned into problems. They care about their family, which goes wrong when it gets out of proportion and they do anything to advance their own at the expense of others. Or a daring man is encouraged to be rash. The point of view of the book seeks to understand people, and see where things can go wrong. In order to set them right.
And the man with the head injury gets assigned a reader, so he isnt left stranded, he makes new friends from it. Still a painful result, but his community will help him through it.
It would be so easy to leave off the story without that kindness, or kill off characters to leave the protagonist to work alone, or keep the story focused on the moment of injury rather than the long time healing. But it doesnt do that. It follows people through until they're going to be okay.
So I like these books very well, even if they walk in dark places.
They bring the light there.