The Assassins of Thasalon – Lois McMaster Bujold

Penric’s brother in law Arisaydia is attacked by assassins from Cedonia (his former home), and Penric and Desdemona immediately see that something is seriously wrong. Someone is using demons as assassins, with the end results of these young demons burning out from killing someone.

Arisaydia finds that there’s strife in the royal family, and he’s been called back to help with that, but Pen and Des are quickly given a mission from their God himself to go as well, to bring justice to the demons. We get to see Lady Tanar, Arisaydia’s fiancée again, as well as her loyal servant Bosha. We also get a satisfying conclusion to the events that brought Pen and Des to Cedonia in the first place.

I love the way Bujold has constructed the religion of this world – demons are chaos given form, watched over by the Bastard, and the Saints of this world are just great – they’re not saintly in the sense that we think of that word, but they are special. Love, love, love these books.