A review by ielerol
The Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold

5.0

The whole reason I bother to write goodreads reviews is to help other people figure out if they might like a book or not. Which makes it hard write one here because if you are already a Penric and Desdemona fan, the way you know you'll like this book is that it exists. It's a novel-length Penric story, doing everything a Penric story does well but intensified thanks to the higher stakes. If you are not already a fan, there's enough exposition that you probably could start here, but why bother? If you have even a little bit of interest in a fantasy series with great characterization and a lot of thought put into how and why cultures work the way they do, start at the beginning and you won't be sorry.

So instead I will say that if I have any complaint at all, it's that a series featuring the patron god of gay people doesn't have many important gay characters. So my headcanon is that every single maybe-implied throuple of the series is definitely an extremely gay throuple. This is maybe also the lesson I've taken from Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen: every potential Bujold throuple is canon. Obviously, this means that however much Adelis resists it at first, he and Boscha are definitely going to end up in bed together.