Penric & Desdemona, Book 9: Masquerade in Lodi

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Other authorsLauren St. Onge (Cover artist)
Hardcover, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Subterranean Press (2021), 176 pages

Description

Bastard's Eve is a night of celebration for most residents in the canal city of Lodi, but not for sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona, who find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Glennis.LeBlanc
This Penric novella is set earlier in his timeline so if the reader isn’t caught up with all of them it is fine. Penric has stopped being a physician and is now just working on his book and occasionally as a temple sorcerer. The city of Lodi has a huge festival for the Bastard god, the god that
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Penric represents. What starts out as consulting a shipwreck victim that has a demon inside causes Penric to meet the local saint to help cast out the demon. But the victim has escaped the temple and Penric needs to hunt him down with only the saint for help during the festival night. A great story and very enjoyable without having to have read all the other ones.
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LibraryThing member quondame
Penric has an interesting night with a saint of the Bastard. Not that sort of night, but mayhem abounds. Though Penric seemed a bit slow on the uptake
LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Nice. This is set right after Penric gets away from being a physician - and it's sort of the start of his being a detective. He encounters a young man carrying a demon - and the demon, and possibly the man, is quite mad. They slip away - are lost within the city (a city of islands and bridges), on
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the night of the Bastard's Festival - everyone is out most of the night, in masks and costumes. Penric and a saint of the Bastard have to try to locate the man and remove the demon - which means poor Desdemona has to hang around a saint most of a night. And then the saint goes missing... There's a lot of luck and coincidence happening here, which in this context probably means the Bastard was meddling. Good story, excellent ending (everyone gets what they deserve), and a nice enrichment of our understanding of Penric and Desdemona.
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LibraryThing member kmartin802
Penric and his demon Desdemona need to find a man possessed of a demon and remove the demon from him. This requires the help of a saint who eats demons and who is a young girl. It also requires searching a town during Bastard's Day festivities to find the missing man.
LibraryThing member LisCarey
Penric, and his demon, Desdemona, are still relatively new in the canal city and seaport of Lodi, and his position as Archdivine Ogial's court sorcerer. When Penric is called to the Gift of the Sea charity hospice for sailors to see a "poor mad fellow" fished out of the sea by a fishing ship, whose
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problem might be of the supernatural kind, he finds, indeed, that the young man is demon-ridden.

While Penric is in the hospice physician's office discussing how how quickly they can get a Saint of the Bastard there to relieve the unidentified young man of his demon, the young man and the demon, alarmed by the visit from Penric and Desdemona, escape from the hospice. This makes a relatively simple, if unpleasant, task far more difficult. It's seemingly a good development when a woman and another young man show up--the demon-ridden young man's mother, and a friend, who was a shipmate on the ship the demon-ridden fell overboard from. More eyes, someone who can join the search knowing where in Lodi the young man, at least, might think to hide, etc. Penric also learns where to find the Bastard's Saint in Lodi. She's a young woman who grew up in the Bastard's orphanage on the Isle of Gulls, and still resides there.

The fact that all this has happened on Bastard's Eve, a night of revelry and partying in the streets, and a day and night Penric might reasonably have expected to have off, does not make things easier for him, or indeed for the Saint, Chio, whose birthday is officially Bastard's Day. Though truthfully, in addition to doing her job as the Saint, she's rather pleased to be able to get out on the town on Bastard's Eve, with less strict chaperonage than the orphanage would normally have allowed.

What follows has Penric and Chio learning new things about Lodi, the demon they're chasing, how Saints and sorcerers can work in relatively close proximity to each other (too close, and Desdemona would rather hide), and about that helpful young man who wants to help find and rescue his friend. And who may have an interest in the demon-ridden young man's sister.

It's a great little adventure, and a visit with Penric and Desdemona. Recommended.

I bought this book.
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LibraryThing member jsabrina
It's always a pleasure to spend a few hours with Pen & Des. . . although I would have enjoyed seeing more of Des.

Chio is a wonderful new character, and I hope that she will make an appearance in future volumes of this series.
LibraryThing member Dokfintong
Couldn't get into it and DNF.
LibraryThing member Herenya
I didn’t feel any great urgency to read this flashback Penric and Desdemona novella as it is set before Penric’s Mission, which means important people in Pen’s life won’t make an appearance nor will there be any significant personal developments But nevertheless it is a satisfying mystery
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involving a couple of interesting side characters.
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LibraryThing member amberwitch
A Penric and Desdemona book set after they leave the Weald, driven to take service in Lodi after the Princess-Archdivine death.

A demon has possessed a young man, and, frightened of Desdemona, escapes before Penric can find a saint to send the demon back to its maker, The Bastard. The story takes
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place over the evening and night before a festival dedicated to The Bastard, and mostly consists of Penric chasing all over town, trying to find the young man as well as a saint and a murderer.
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LibraryThing member elorin
Penric and Desdemona are called to identify a raving man fished out of the sea. The madman escapes and they team up with Blessed Chio to hunt him down on the eve of Bastard's day.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2020-10-15

ISBN

1645240479 / 9781645240471

Local notes

Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.
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