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World of the Five Gods by Lois McMaster Bujold


AncalagonTheBlack

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Her Vorkosigan Saga discussion topic.

 

Was browsing amazon and was surprised to see that a new Penric & Desdemona novella, Penric's Fox came out earlier this month! wohoo! love these books.:) Didn't want to post in the Vorkosigan topic,hence this new topic.I love Bujold's fantasy works and have not yet read her SF.Here's a reading order of her World of the Five Gods series of books/novella's:

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What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I'm dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole.  However, the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first, so Curse-Paladin is the recommended reading order.  The third is in effect an independent prequel, not sharing characters or setting with the other two, so readers of the prior volumes need to adjust their expectations going in. In any case, the publication order is:
 
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
 

In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.

Current internal chronology of the Penric & Desdemona tales is:


"Penric's Demon"
"Penric and the Shaman"
"Penric's Fox"
"Penric's Mission"
"Mira's Last Dance"

 

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3 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I did not know that at the time I read them a decade ago.  But the third was so different from the first two that I doubt it mattered.  I haven't read any of the novellas yet, where do they fall in the timeline?  Do they share a setting/characters with any of the books?

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4 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I did not know that at the time I read them a decade ago.  But the third was so different from the first two that I doubt it mattered.  I haven't read any of the novellas yet, where do they fall in the timeline?  Do they share a setting/characters with any of the books?

The gods are the same, but I don't believe that the settings or characters appearing in the Chalion books re-appear in the Penric stories.

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  • 2 months later...

She certainly is active, which is nice for an author, and her work process and product seems to be a thing she enjoys, which is good to hear.  Stories about authors for whom the driving force of their writing is circumstance always make me sad, such as Raymond Feist.

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7 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Just downloaded the latest  Pen & Des novella: The Prisoner of Limnos.:) Will get to it after i'm done with The Fall of Dragons.

I didn't download it initially because Bujold admitted the first release had an amusingly terrible mistake where the last paragraph of every chapter was missing. Apparently it's been fixed now.

By the way,does anyone know how many more of these Bujold plans to write?

I'm not sure even she really knows how many she's going to write. She's certainly not had a problem with long-running series in the past.

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On 8/19/2017 at 6:08 PM, Contrarius+ said:

The only characters that reappear are the gods themselves.

Incidentally, IMHO Penric's Fox  is the worst ("worst" being relative, since she's such a good writer) of the Penric stories so far. I gave it 3 stars out of 5.

I loved Penric's Fox.  I found Penric and the Shaman to be the most confusing story.  The new one is great and was just what I needed after 3 really dark books in a row.  I'm rereading the others now.  It's a comfort.  Are the other World of 5 Gods stories as sweet?   Really like the setting and I'm enjoying my break.

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24 minutes ago, Lily Valley said:

I loved Penric's Fox.  I found Penric and the Shaman to be the most confusing story.  The new one is great and was just what I needed after 3 really dark books in a row.  I'm rereading the others now.  It's a comfort.  Are the other World of 5 Gods stories as sweet?   Really like the setting and I'm enjoying my break.

I've read The Curse of Chalion and The Paladin of Souls, I thought they were both excellent stories and the characterisation is every bit as good as in the Penric or Vorkosigan books. It's been a while since I've read them but I don't think the tone was radically different from the Penric stories, although probably Curse has a darker storyline and Cazaril is a more troubled protagonist than Penric is.

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  • 2 months later...
On 11/6/2017 at 2:12 PM, Lily Valley said:

I loved Penric's Fox.  I found Penric and the Shaman to be the most confusing story.  The new one is great and was just what I needed after 3 really dark books in a row.  I'm rereading the others now.  It's a comfort.  Are the other World of 5 Gods stories as sweet?   Really like the setting and I'm enjoying my break.

In a word, yes. There is quite a bit of darkness there too, but, unlike practically every other fantasy with immensely powerful beings, the Five Gods are almost entirely good (the least good of them is at most neutral) and they are not shy about interfering. Also, pretty much all of them are rather romantic.

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Have you read The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls or the Hallowed Hunt, Lily? If not, get thee to a purveyor of fine quality literature post haste. They are lovely, well written, idealistic books. Yes, bad things happen to good people, but they develop, and grow, and have relationships and are generally marvelous.

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