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The second half volume of the Sharing Knife series, following directly on from Beguilement. Dag and Fawn, newly married, travel to Dag’s home with the Lakewalkers. There they meet resistance to their cross-cultural marriage, family drama, a new malice threat, and some strange new developments with Dag’s Ground powers (life force magic, basically).
Since it does not seem possible to review this book without addressing it, I’ll pause here to register my continued bafflement over the splitting of the volumes. It makes perfect sense! I mean, my God, we could never have a 200,000 word fantasy novel! Utterly unheard of! And everyone knows those romance readers all have teeny attention spans, anyway!
I’m annoyed because I think I would have liked the two books as one better than I liked either separately. Also, I gather the impetus to split them was an editorial one, and given I think it was a bad call on literary grounds, that leaves moneymaking motives. And that alienates me. A lot.
Ahem. The book itself is nice enough. I complained about some of the la-di-dah patness of the first volume, and this book turns around and delivers a nasty, prickly mess of people who never did and never will reconcile, let alone accept each other. I appreciated that, as well as the thematic topnote about living forward and prescribed paths and asking questions and how to know when you’re doing right and when you’re just compounding tragedy.
The book is about being the one who stops, and in that sense it’s lovely, if unsubtle. I do have to admit to snorting more than once, particularly when the profundities tipped right over into clichés.
My God, if only someone had ever said that to me before! To be fair, these are appropriate things to come out of Fawn’s mouth, considering who she is and where she’s from, but I still rolled my eyes pretty hard.
The bottom line, though, is that this book entertained me, but it never moved me beyond occasional mild indignation on Fawn’s behalf. Dag is interesting (though a bit too close a reiteration of several recent Bujold male leads, if you ask me), and Fawn is all right, but I wasn’t there with them, and I certainly wasn’t feeling the romance the way I wanted to. Shame, really.
Since it does not seem possible to review this book without addressing it, I’ll pause here to register my continued bafflement over the splitting of the volumes. It makes perfect sense! I mean, my God, we could never have a 200,000 word fantasy novel! Utterly unheard of! And everyone knows those romance readers all have teeny attention spans, anyway!
I’m annoyed because I think I would have liked the two books as one better than I liked either separately. Also, I gather the impetus to split them was an editorial one, and given I think it was a bad call on literary grounds, that leaves moneymaking motives. And that alienates me. A lot.
Ahem. The book itself is nice enough. I complained about some of the la-di-dah patness of the first volume, and this book turns around and delivers a nasty, prickly mess of people who never did and never will reconcile, let alone accept each other. I appreciated that, as well as the thematic topnote about living forward and prescribed paths and asking questions and how to know when you’re doing right and when you’re just compounding tragedy.
Dag murmured, "It used to happen up in Luthlia sometimes in the winter, someone would fall through rotten ice. And their friends or their kin would try to pull them out, and instead be pulled in after. One after another. Instead of running for help or a rope though the smart patrollers there always wore a length of rope wrapped around their waists in the cold season. Except if someone's slipped under the ice-well, never mind. The hardest thing. . . the hardest thing in such a string of tragedy was to be the one who stopped. But you bet the older folks understood."
The book is about being the one who stops, and in that sense it’s lovely, if unsubtle. I do have to admit to snorting more than once, particularly when the profundities tipped right over into clichés.
Fawn took a long breath, considering this painful thought. "Some_ times," she said distantly, with all the dignity she could gather, "it isn't about having
the right answers. It's about asking the right questions."
My God, if only someone had ever said that to me before! To be fair, these are appropriate things to come out of Fawn’s mouth, considering who she is and where she’s from, but I still rolled my eyes pretty hard.
The bottom line, though, is that this book entertained me, but it never moved me beyond occasional mild indignation on Fawn’s behalf. Dag is interesting (though a bit too close a reiteration of several recent Bujold male leads, if you ask me), and Fawn is all right, but I wasn’t there with them, and I certainly wasn’t feeling the romance the way I wanted to. Shame, really.