Lois McMaster Bujold has been releasing a series of novellas. They’re all part of a series, using a common set of characters. But so far you’ve had to buy the stories individually, either in e-book format or as pretty overpriced hardcovers.
I don’t like buying e-books. And I’m not going to pay $150 or more for what is essentially one multi-volume book.
Does anybody know if there are plans to publish the work in a single volume in the foreseeable future?
This is a very prolific writer you’re talking about. Could you give a bit more of a clue? Name of the series, maybe?
They are related to characters from the Chalion series. This would be one, I believe.
Penric and Desdemona are the recurring characters. There are 7 of them. The 7th of them was just published at something that seems a full novel price to me, so I was momentarily hopeful you had your answer, but it appears to be a continuation, albeit out of order.
Based on other comments, you are not the first to ask for an omnibus, but no answer yet.
ETA: I find elsewhere that LMB states that the rights to the works are still held by the publishing house, and no omnibus is planned at this time. Perhaps at a future date.
It’s the Penric and Desdemona series. (I don’t think that’s an official name but it’s the name of the two main characters.)
The novellas in the series:
“Penric’s Demon” (2015)
“Penric and the Shaman” (2016)
“Penric’s Fox” (2017)
“Penric’s Mission” (2016)
“Mira’s Last Dance” (2017)
“The Prisoner of Limnos” (2017)
They sell on Kindle for $3.99 each so I could buy the ebook version of what’s been written so far for twenty-four dollars. Which is what I will probably do if they aren’t be released in a reasonable book form. (The hardcover editions were published at twenty-five dollars apiece, which is a high price for a novella-length work. And they were published in limited amounts so some of them aren’t available at their original price anymore.)
And Kindle is the only format the ebooks are available in, which is annoying. However, they are available at libraries (and the first two of them were nominated for the Hugo award, and were made available to voters in a variety of formats, so that was nice).
I really, really enjoyed this series, if that helps you decide. I didn’t hesitate to buy each new one as it came out. Maybe if I’d known it was going to be a series, I would have hesitated to start. But as it happened, I’m happy about it. These are wonderful characters that grow and change and develop new dimensions as the series goes on.
I have realized that they are not published in in-world chronological order, if that matters to you. For example, the events of the last published predated the novella preceding it. I imagine that LMB had her reasons, but if that sort of thing matters to you, you might want to read descriptions carefully as you pick reading order.