Recently I was laid off from my job at a state funded non-profit due to
budget cuts. I knew for two months ahead that this was going to happen,
giving me plenty of time to make plans in my head of all the housework I
would get done and all the cool projects I could work on and all the great
books I could read with all the wonderful free time. And then just before my
last day at work, my husband found a better, saner, higher paying job
relieving me of an immediate need to take any old job that comes my way to
keep the mortgage paid. Phew, I can sit back and relax and enjoy this time
around the holidays.

Well, what really happens is that one day you are part of an organization
and the next you aren’t and the abrupt change leaves you disoriented and
somehow in mourning for something that’s not specific. I was wandering
around the house in my pajamas all day and taking too many naps and drinking
too much coffee and eating way too much chocolate until I realized I need to
get out of the house more and set up a routine to keep myself from slowly
getting weird. So now I visit the library at least weekly and reward myself
for a morning doing nasty housework chores with an afternoon at the local
coffee shop with a book and a cup of ridiculously expensive coffee. And it’s
working. I started reading again and knitting again and stopped moping.
Moping gets you nowhere fast.

So, on my last weekly visit to the library I was browsing the sci-fi/fantasy
shelves looking for something my son might like that he hasn’t already read.
I saw this book by Bujold which rang little bells in the back of my head
due, I think, to a review of Will’s of its sequel. It made its way into my
bag of books. I picked it up one afternoon and couldn’t put it down. I was
as enchanted with this book as with her Miles Vorkosigan series.

What she does with the military in the Vorkosigan series, she does with
religion and clerics in this novel. She takes what is at least nominally
familiar to most of her audience and tweaks it enough to make it fresh and
realistic and yet still allow herself latitude to be creative. And she sets
it in a world that resembles medieval Europe with Church and State being
almost completely intertwined. There’s kind of a fun little nod to Chaucer
near the end that amused me no end. She does some very interesting things
with free will, fate and divine intervention and how they relate to the
lives of human beings.

The best thing about Bujold, though, is her incredible narrative skills. She
tells the most wonderful, believable stories in a style that’s articulate
and clear and descriptive. I can’t wait to find the next in the series at the
library next week.