The Physicians of Vilnoc

The eighth and so far last novella in the Penric and Desdemona series sees Penric happily settled in the duchy of Orbas, with his wife, new child, and mother in law making a happy home. But when his brother in law General Arisaydia turns up and asks for Penric's help treating a disease that's spreading through the military camp, Penric has to leave the comforts of home and go quarantine himself with the army, where a handful of cases soon turn into 40+ and Penric finds himself forced by circumstances to push his physician's training to the limits while also trying to figure out what the cause of the disease might be. We watch Penric wrestle to balance his own mental and physical health against the needs of all his patients, and work with young physician Rede to try and figure out how the disease is transmitted before it's completely out of control.

As with all the Penric novellas this is too short; and not just that I wanted more, but that they're all so short that there isn't really time for any twists or moments of real despair before they wrap up happily ever after. And that's a real shame, because one of the strengths of Bujold's writing in her Vorkosigan series is the way she isn't afraid to throw her characters against the worst thing that could possibly happen to them. But there really isn't room for this in the Penric novellas, so they end up feeling to me like light, enjoyable fantasy reading but also a sort of low-calorie version of the Vorkosigan novels where all the hard parts have been glossed over.

Given its publication date in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic this was a remarkably timely topic for this novella, which I presume must be a pure concidence because I'm sure it must have been in the pipeline already by the time the pandemic began, but it certainly makes for very topical reading.