Sunday 8 March 2020

The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold is another Penric and Desdemona novella, this time directly following on from Mira's Last Dance. This review and the blurb contains minor spoilers for Mira's Last Dance and possibly also Penric's Mission, which is the start of this little subgroup of novellas.

In this sequel novella to “Mira’s Last Dance”, Temple sorcerer Penric and the widow Nikys have reached safety in the duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys’s mother has been taken hostage by her brother’s enemies at the Cedonian imperial court, and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.

Their own romance still unresolved, Nikys, Penric, and of course Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile country once more, finding along the way that family relationships can be as unexpectedly challenging as any rescue scheme

This was another fun read. I enjoyed the story, which sees Penric hatching an elaborate rescue mission to rescue Nikys's mother, while continuing to woo Nikys. The point of view switches between Penric and Nikys, so we get some interesting scenes between Nikys and her mother, as well as the usual conversations between Penric and Desdemona (also a great scene between Nikys and Desdemona).

Overall, this was a fun read and pretty much the sort of thing I've come to expect from Penric novellas. I don't especially recommend this as a starting point to the series, though I think it works better that way than Mira's Last Dance did. My general recommendation from my previous review stands: I recommend reading Penric's Mission and Mira's Last Dance before The Prisoner of Limnos, and probably also Penric's Demon to introduce Penric and Desdemona's unique relationship. There's still one more novella I haven't read, which I plan to get to at some point soon, and hopefully more to come in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2017, Self-published
Series: Penric & Desdemona book 6 of 7 in publication order
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Apple Books

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