Lois Bujold's The Curse of Chalion

Just finished this one, in audiobook format narrated by Lloyd James, who immediately goes onto the list of narrators who genuinely know what they're doing. Looks like he's done several Heinleins, including some I've never gotten around to reading, so I might well go there soon.

Anyhow, Bujold has achieved an excellent fantasy story here, creating a secondary world with intriguing enough politics, metaphysics, and characters, and then putting a quintessential fantasy story into it. Tolkein talks about eucatastrophy-the sudden turn from certain defeat to rescue and victory-as the main unique quality of fantastic literature, and the modern fantasy authors do tend to put excellent eucatastrophic moments into their works, but Bujold has understood the point behind this idea in a way few others do, and presents us with a Comedy disguised as a Tragedy up until the very last moment.

(The 'cameo appearance' at the end by the Canterbury Tales is quite odd, though; something that deliberately sticks out near the book's finish. There may be a point to it, of course, I'll consider after reading or listening to the other books in the 'series'.)