The Sharing Knife: Beguilement

Lois McMaster Bujold

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This is the first book of a tetralogy. Like all reviews, this one will contain some spoilers, but I'll try to keep from major ones.

Overall, I really liked this book. It has a fairly different feel from other Bujold books. It's a fantasy romance, set in a fairly rustic, low-magic world.

The pacing is rather interesting. The bulk of the action and adventure is in the first chunk, the bulk of the romance and them coming together is in the second chunk, and all of the rest of the book is them dealing with everyone else's reaction to their romance.

Main Characters:

Fawn Bluefield is a Farmer "girl" (18), leaving home and painful circumstances, heading towards Glassforge, a town which has an industry (as opposed to being just a small farming village). She hopes to find work and independence there. She's short, pretty, nice, friendly, and really, really smart.

Dag Redwing is an older Lakewalker, a different cultural and ethnic group. He's war-torn and scarred, mentally and physically, and is missing a hand. He's also really, really skilled and capable.

Basic Plot:

He saves her, he tries to save her again, she saves him and the world. This is just the first part of the book.

The rest of the book involves their recovery, and the romance between them. I really enjoyed the romance between them, they fall for each other quickly and the bond between them remains strong. It's the rest of the world that supplies the antagonism to their romance. Farmers and Lakewalkers aren't supposed to date, or for that matter, engage in any form of intimate contact. Intermarriage is unthinkable.

This book goes through them dealing with her family, dealing with Dag's family is left to the next book.

World Information:

Farmers:

The farmers are all of the common-folk (including the mayors of towns and such). A large chunk are actual farmers, but it also includes tailors, blacksmiths, glass-makers, etc.

Compared to Lakewalkers, they're shorter-lived, shorter, and don't have any magic.

Lakewalkers:

The Lakewalkers spends most of its effort patrolling for malices, more about them below. They also have a trade going in items that they've magically enhanced to be better. And they'll sometimes come to the aid of the farmers in other ways, for example, they might aid in the case of bandit trouble.

They can see and manipulate "ground", something that runs through everything, living or dead. They use this to sense things or people around them (range varies based on Lakewalker, but 1 mile isn't unheard of), to heal each other, and to produce enhanced items. For example, blades that don't rust and stay sharp.

Compared to Farmers, they're longer-lived and taller.

Malices:

Malices (or Blight Bogles) are a sort of boss monster that appears semi-randomly, and then grows more and more powerful, and creates its own army of mudmen as well as mind-controlling (or slaving) farmers. They suck the life (or "ground") out of everything around them, and go through "molts" where they achieve a new level of ability. They also can take the knowledge and abilities from people, and give those abilities to its mudmen.


All material Copyright © 2009–2014 Ulysses Somers, except where otherwise noted.