Demon Daughter, by Lois McMaster Bujold
A very gentle story, one of my favorites of the series. In Demon Daughter a young girl, Atta, is washed ashore following a shipwreck and for reasons ends up in the care of Penric, who (if you haven’t been keeping up with this series) is basically a semi itinerant priest who deals with cases of demon possession.
Demon Daughter ends up a combination of a small domestic drama and a question of the nature of demon possession in this universe and it is small and it is quiet, but it is deeply powerful. Atta is possessed by a very young demon and that allows for the perspective of Desdemona to come very much to the forefront of this novella.
This is the twelfth novella in the Penric and Desdemona series and for a reader who has been along for the ride since the first volume, Demon Daughter is deeply satisfying.
Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire
I have to wonder how close we are getting to an end point with the Incryptid series. That’s not a statement of exhaustion, but an observation of the stories McGuire is telling at this point. Spoilers will likely abound - but the previous book, Aftermarket Afterlife, had the Covenant (if you know you know) launching major attacks against the Price-Healy family and our heroes hitting back with a counter attack utilizing the ghostly skills of Mary Dunlavy to hit the Covenant at their main chapterhouse. Installment Immortality sort of deals with the consequence of that, in that it is focused on what happens to a ghost who blows everything up and can’t quite get away from the bomb and also gives an update on the state of the Covenant following that attack.
On the assumption Seanan McGuire isn’t just getting starting fifteen books into the series, It seems like we’re getting close to a potential end game for Incryptid (this is also notable after reading the description for next year’s book Butterfly Effects).
That’s neither here nor there when thinking about Installment Immortality, but the future of the series was weighing on my mind when reading it.
What Installment Immortality does well is tell what is functionally a side story from the main Price family action. Still a ghost getting to do ghost things Mary Dunlavy is put on a quest to put a stop to Covenant agents attacking the ghosts of America - and through this examines the consequences of several books ago regarding cousin Arthur (again, this will make sense if you know the series - I don’t know that I’d recommend jumping in here even though it’s a new narrator and those are typically jump in spots).
As a general rule I love this series. Seanan McGuire has done a fantastic job making Incryptid feel very lived in. We’ve been on a *journey* with this family and everything is familiar even with McGuire is doing new things, shifting perspectives, and making things generally uncomfortable for her characters. It’s impossible to read Installment Immortality in a vacuum. It’s the fifteenth book in a series that I’ve been reading for many years after diving headfirst into Discount Armageddon.
If Installment Immortality isn’t one of my favorite books of the series, and it’s not, it is still an overall satisfying read but I think primarily for those who have been along for the ride and it doesn’t hit some of the highs of earlier books in the series.
Overcaptain, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr
Alyiakal returns in Overcaptain, the latest entry in L.E. Modesitt’s long running Saga of Recluce. Following the events of From the Forest, success comes with a price and Alyiakal has been promoted, assigned to close a military post that has been a hot mess, and further assigned to be deputy Commander to an officer who doesn’t want the help.
There’s a trend in the Recluce series of extremely competent men who don’t fit the perfect political mold of those in power but who do their jobs so well their advancement cannot be denied but are given continually impossible tasks that are designed to either fail or kill them (or both). If you’re down for that, along with the understanding that Recluce novels live in the mundanity of their protagonists day to day lives that hint and build towards a much greater conflict.
Modesitt’s prose is smooth and Overcaptain is languorous easy reading. I continually describe Recluce as comfort reading, which isn’t to say that the action itself is comfort but Overcaptain (and the rest of the series) is a book to sink in and just live in this world for as long as it takes to make it to the end. The journey is the point of Recluce, much less so than the destination - but the destination always includes some fireworks.
Overcaptain is another solid entry in the Saga of Recluce.
PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.
