A friend used the phrase “ruefulness aforethought” to describe Bujold’s release of this novella in the current moment.
She’s...very not wrong.
And it was fun to be back with Penric and Desdemona even under the circumstances and also I would like an anti-Covid demon please because the downside of that oft-misquoted G. K. Chesterton quote about fairy tales teaching children not that dragons exist but can be defeated is the degree to which our fantasy revolutions and recoveries, grounded in magic and the right people in power and the reassuring KNOWN goodness in the hearts of humans, are fundamentally the fantasy that everything will be okay.
And it might be. But the power of the surety of WILL is both exquisite and devastating.