The Vorkosigan Saga has been one of my major pleasures of the past few years, so it's interesting to see Bujold turn her talents to fantasy rather than science fiction. It's also interesting to see what elements get carried over into a very different universe.

Ista is an unconventional fantasy heroine. Middle-aged, embittered by past failures, imprisoned by her family on suspicion of madness, an unnecessary relic for her daughter the Queen, and unsure of what she is supposed to be doing with her very high and very constricted way in the world. As a simple matter of escape from her recently dead mother's servants, she goes on a pilgrimage with unconventional companions, and winds up in a border fortress beset by a supernatural mystery. Ista has only a few days to begin to unravel the tangled skein before they are besieged by a potent sorceress queen, and only desperate action and supernatural intervention can save the day.

As a matter of world-building, the strongest parts of this book are concerned with the supernatural, with the five gods who bestow their double-edged blessings on Ista, and the demons who power a form of magic based on entropy. There's a great matter-of-factness to the undoubtedly real gods of the story, and they ways in which their agendas and powers go beyond human understanding. The Father, Mother, Daughter, Son (and Bastard) religions of the region are clearly inspired by Trinitarian Christianity, but is not a slavish copy of any real world religion. I wish I could say the politics matched up to that, but for all that Bujold "got" Barrayar, Chalion is medieval without given a sense of the interplay of dynasties, inheritances, and legacies that make actual history so dense, or the grandness of individuals that makes epic fantasy epic.

The gods are richly imagined, true, but the difference between science (even advanced super-science) and magic is that science is limited in what it can do. Ista undergoes immense changes over the course of the book, makes wise decisions in the heat of the moment, and deals with the consequences, but the initial impetus of those decisions is always the gods, and the outside intervention robs the novel of key tension. Ista starts rejecting the gods, because the last time she listened to them 20 years ago, two good men died, but even with that looming over the story, I never really doubted that she would win because she had the Bastard inside her, which outmatched any demon. Miles Vorkosigan doesn't get to ride into battle at the helm of some super-tech battlecruiser with more firepower than his enemies can dream of; he has just his wits and a few tricks.

I enjoyed Ista as a character, curmudgeonly as she was for a protagonist. There are parallels to a more damaged Cordelia Vorkosigan, the same strength of character wasted away rather than rewarded. Ista seems to arrive at her conclusions by giving no fucks, rather than a truly external perspective. Lissa and dy Cabon also felt familiar as supporting characters, along with the way that major issues (invasion, the divine) pivot on the romances of a handful of people. And of course, the idea that the Great Men of the previous generation were secretly gay.

Paladin of Souls is a decent book, but it never really captured me. I probably just have different tastes in fantasy, more epic, more weird, but too much of this book feels pro forma for me to really love it.