The Physicians of Vilnoc

Will review at www.fantasyliterature.com.

I'm not going to not like anything from the World of the Five Gods (fantasy! magic! religion! theology!) but (not a spoiler if you've read literally anything else in this universe) I do greatly enjoy a legitimate reason for deus ex machina.

I wasn't keen on this one originally, because Penric is having a bad time for much of it, and it's not a cheerful story in general. However, he manages to solve the problem in the end, with the help of his colleagues and his god. So it has a relatively happy ending, except for the mostly anonymous people who die in the course of it; and after repeated rereadings I find that I can accept it as a good story, with the bonus of some new characters.

Penric shares his body with his demon, Desdemona, who has long experience and advanced skills in medicine, and Penric has had medical training himself. However, when he first tried to work as a physician in Martensbridge, he became suicidal from overwork and distress; and decided that medicine wasn't his calling. That period in his life was skipped over and mentioned only briefly in the series as a whole.

However, this story puts him back into that situation, when an unknown disease starts killing people in his locality, and there's almost no-one else around to deal with it. His powers and skills don't seem to be enough: he needs to reach some understanding of the disease, and he needs more help to cope with all the patients. Meanwhile, he begins to suffer again from overwork and distress.

The other stories in the series have mostly been adventures involving travel, plus one or two crime mysteries. This one is unusual in being a medical mystery with no significant travel; and it's unusually serious in tone, as patients continue to die throughout the story.

The medical mystery seems to me a good one, and it eventually gets solved in a plausible way. All credit to the author for research as well as creativity.

Penric and Nikys now have a baby daughter, who will presumably become more of a character later on, if the series continues for long enough.