The Assassins of Thasalon (Penric and Desdemona, volume 10) by Lois McMaster Bujold

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-fire-begets-this-fire
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On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 2:59:43 PM UTC+1, James Nicoll wrote:
> The Assassins of Thasalon (Penric and Desdemona, volume 10) by Lois McMaster Bujold
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-fire-begets-this-fire
> --
> My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
> My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
> My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
> My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

From the review:
1: Yeah, I don’t know how in a world with living, somewhat interventionist gods one gets significant doctrinal drift but the people of this world have managed it.

I think this is just about possible, because Bujold is far too good a writer to give any of her characters too much power, even interventionist gods. From Chapter 13 of The Curse of Challion, after Cazaril invokes some magic which has unintended consequences, he is told by Umegat

...Ordol's classic sermon of the cups?... Men's will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom.... have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls... (end quote)

I think the common stance in this world, that God may not compel belief, has under-appreciated consequences, especially in the modern world of big data, where a future statistical analysis, based by matching reports of prayer in church flyers against health service records, could show statistical evidence of God long before a few people in the present day could notice that their prayers were actually tending to work. I also note that it gives another interpretation to the idea that God might be limited by lack of faith: if God cannot compel belief, to act decisively in the case of somebody who did not believe would be to compel their belief.