sunlit_stone

And it's such a strong failure, the failure of everything he's been working on in his life up till now..

Yes, a very profound failure -- such an excellent place to start from!

I do like Adelis a lot, and Nikys (though I was very annoyed by how much she vanished as a character after marrying Penric--seriously, again? It makes me think ironically of Kareen's reluctance to marry Mark for that very reason... I'm not sure what to make of it. It's not as if Bujold can't write a heterosexual romance where we get a good sense of character and involvement from both members, because look at Aral and Cordelia...

Yeah... I like Nikys also, and like you find it weird that she just sort of becomes Penric's wife and mother of his children as soon as they're married -- it's weird! Not weird in the general context of fiction, but weird given LMB specifically and Cordelia and Ista (and, as you say, the acknowledgement with Kareen). I guess maybe the difference is that mothering of young children *is* pretty consuming? (and it kind of is), and that just happens to be the phase with Nikys at the moment of the story?

and Adelis' fiancé and her servant whom she's in love with/who loves her, though I can't remember either of their names right now--

Tanar and Bosha! I also love them both, especially Bosha, and the year I caught up on Penric through that novella, I was prompting for the lot of them in Yuletide (in an Adelis-centric fic), which did not happen, but I did get a wonderful Adelis-contracts-a-wild-demon story, so that was still an excellent Yuletide :D

I really liked the adventure featuring them and Adelis/Nikys' mother, and then I was annoyed by the extent to which the resolution was just Penric calling down his higher authority, both magical and spiritual..

Yes! Loved that book (and meeting Nikys's/their half-brother), but, yeah, I've gotten a bit tired of the way everything seems to end with Penric ex machina these days :P

(Have never read the Sharing Knife books, because mostly I've heard less positive things about them, but I suppose at some point, when I've run out of other LMB completely and there's no new work forthcoming, I will probably give them a shot...)

but I have no objection to contemporary politics when they actually make sense with the story. (Actually, when they make sense with the story, it's kind of more awkward when they aren't there, honestly.)

Yeah, I'm fine with this too! Like, I think Rivers of London blends the real world social issues well with the magical worldbuilding and that's one of the things I love about it -- admittedly easier to do in urban fantasy police procedural than in secondary world. (Looking up my Children of Blood and Bone write-up reminded me of a series that I think does real-world-relevant themes and commentary BRILLIANTLY in a secondary setting, though -- N.K.Jemisin's The Broken Earth books -- which are an amazing, once-in-a-generation sort of achievement, I think, but it CAN be done!)

But so often the worlds people want to use just don't work with the actual stories they seem to want to tell, or at least with the commentary they want their stories to offer...

Yeah, this is the part I object to. And if the world doesn't support the story, then the story falls flat and the world feels fake, too, so it's a lose-lose (at least for me, but I admit I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of stuff in fiction).

But for example--okay, another of my incredible Harry Potter pet peeves is the Traditional English Wizarding Culture Is Pagan trope. The Statute of Secrecy happened in SIXTEEN-EIGHTY-NINE. If wizards were integrated with the Muggle world before that, then Traditional English Wizarding Culture would have been predominantly CHRISTIAN.

That is a good point I never really stopped to consider, but of course that's right! (I do have lower expectations for fanfic worldbuilding -- not that I haven't encountered incredible worldbuilding in fic, I absolutely have, but I don't EXPECT it. Plus, I'm not sure how good JKR was about that herself -- I feel like her worldbuilding tends to be a bit fast and loose, seeing as how she was writing for children early on and has a tendency to go for humor over deep historical underpinnings. Which I don't really mind in HP.)

(Hermione is also Jewish, in a way I think is done really naturally.)

Oh, interesting! I don't think I've run into a Jewish Hermione in fic before :) (but also I did not read a lot of Hermione-centric fic, outside of OT3, even when I was reading HP fic regularly, which I haven't done in about 10 years probably...)

Fair warning the author doesn't much like Ron,

I do appreciate the warning! It sounds like that's treated well, though, so I will probably still take a peek at least :) (I found the HP stuff/the series you mentioned under the "basketofnovas" pseud. My days of reading 100-200k HP fanfic are almost certainly past, but is there a shorter one you'd recommend? With or without Ron in it :)

I think I've read the Children of Blood and Bone but I can't remember the Red, White, and Royal Blue one--I'm curious either way!

Heh, Children of Blood and Bone is the one with the chart -- the only time I was mad enough at a book to make charts, and RWaRB is here :)