She’s mostly been writing penric novellas recently, so that’s plausible. There are a lot of penric novellas.
Are any of them in actual print?
Every so often a collection of three or so gets printed in hardcopy, yes.
Thanks.
I don’t think my local libraries have been getting them; but maybe they’re somewhere in the system. I should check.
If you own an ereader, or are comfortable reading long -form fiction on whatever you use for the SDMB, your library might also lend ebooks.
Ok, I’ll bite the bullet. I had read the Vorkosigan series a couple of years ago and this thread has convinced me I need to reread it. Time to load up the Kindle!
Except for Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen because that one sucked.
I disliked Gentleman Joel and the Red Queen the first time i read it. But i went back and read it as a romance novel, rather than as a space cowboy novel, and liked it much more the second time.
It’s mostly a matter of expectations, if you expect The Warrior’s Apprentice when reading The Vor Game, you’ll dislike it (it happened to me, and I coined the expression “Vor Game’s Syndrome” for books I disliked not because they were bad but because I expected a different book (I re read The Vor Game a few years later and loved it)).
The same thing may be happening with Red Queen, I would suggest, @Catamount, that you reread it too, after rereading the whole series and knowing what to expect you may end up liking it.
It took me forever to finish Cryoburn because… you know.
And then it took me forever to start Red Queen because… you know.
I liked what it was trying to do. In some ways it succeeded and in other ways it was just a boring book.
But the whole idea of it just wrecks me.
I don’t remember Cryoburn that well, but I read Red Queen recently, and… I don’t know. If you are comfortable doing so, can you spell it out?
ARAL DIED.
Here’s the breakdown.
The Penric books are a series of novellas, with one short novel. They’re originally released as ebooks. They then each get a very limited printing. These initial printed versions sell out quickly and then get resold for very high prices.
After a few years, Bujold writes enough that she puts three of the novellas together and re-releases them in book form. There are four of these collected editions in print.
Here’s the list of novellas, in publication order.
Penric’s Demon (2015)
Penric and the Shaman (2016)
Penric’s Mission (2016)
Mira’s Last Dance (2017)
Penric’s Fox (2017)
The Prisoner of Limnos (2017)
The Orphans of Raspay (2019)
The Physicians of Vilnoc (2020)
Masquerade in Lodi (2020)
The Assassins of Thasalon (2021) the short novel
Knot of Shadows (2021)
Demon Daughter (2024)
Penric and the Bandit (2024)
The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (2025)
Testimony of Mute Things (2025)
Darksight Dare (2026)
As is common with Bujold, the order the stories were written and published does not always match the order the events of the stories occurred in. So here is the chronological order of the stories:
Penric’s Demon
Penric and the Shaman
Testimony of Mute Things
Penric’s Fox
Masquerade in Lodi
Penric’s Mission
Mira’s Last Dance
The Prisoner of Limnos
The Orphans of Raspay
The Physicians of Vilnoc
The Assassins of Thasalon
Knot of Shadows
Demon Daughter
Penric and the Bandit
The Adventure of the Demonic Ox
Darksight Dare
And here are the collections with the stories they contain:
Penric’s Progress (2020)
Penric’s Demon
Penric and the Shaman
Penric’s Fox
Penric’s Travels (2020)
Penric’s Mission
Mira’s Last Dance
The Prisoner of Limnos
Penric’s Labors (2022)
Masquerade in Lodi
The Orphans of Raspay
The Physicians of Vilnoc
Penric’s Intrigues (2026)
The Assassins of Thasalon
Knot of Shadows
I’m older than you. That didn’t really bother me at all. He was old and lived a full life. I can now count him as a happy man.
I was a little bit in love with him. Doesn’t happen to me usually with book characters. He’s a lot like my husband in some ways.
That’s the problem. I don’t like romance novels.
Then it’s not a great book for you. 
They do; but I’d really rather read peper, for actual books.
Might wind up making an exception in this case, eventually.
Thanks!
Will investigate further this winter. Too busy now.
And that was a point Miles made to Gregor, in the book set just after the end of the Regency. Aral had spent years ensuring that the Emperor would still have real power once he’d reached the age to take power in his own name, and it was time Gregor used it, based on his own judgement.
One other thought that’s been rattling around in my brain: The Sergyan worm plague was karmic. They’d never have fallen victim to that if Cordelia had had the chance to finish her ecological survey properly.
I don’t either but I liked Red Queen