The Sharing Knife, Book One: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
Title: The Sharing Knife, Book One: Beguilement
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Fantasy/romance
My thoughts: Why were people recommending to me The Lord of Fading Lands when books this awesome were out there instead?
This series had been repeatedly recommended to me, starting nearly a year ago, by a friend of mine. This friend had also advised that I avoid beginning the books too close to bedtime and that I obtain, at the very least, the first two books of this quad so that I could read them back to back. I really need to start taking her word at greater weight.
I waited for a long time before bothering to track down a copy of this first book this series because at the time I had only just read the appallingly bad C.L. Wilson book, Lord of the Fading Lands, and the two series have unfortunate parallels. They are both fantasy/romance books. They are both four-volume sets. They both are written from the dual main characters' points of view. They both focus on uniting two different cultures of peoples. And they both revolve around May/December romances.
The thing is, in this Bujold book, all of these things are done well. The romance between the characters is important to the book, but it's the fantasy element that fuels the plot. The alternating voices of the characters are fluid and focused, and never once devolve into a he felt/she felt situation. The May/December aspect is handled deftly and in a reasonably practical manner. Fawn pretends through about two-thirds of the book to be older than she actually is, and Dag avoids announcing his precise age until directly asked it by Fawn's father. There was a part in the book where the Dag and Fawn were enjoying sex together, Fawn was ready to launch into round two, and Dag was all, Wait! I need more recovery time, which had me laughing aloud.
It is through Fawn's perspective that this fantasy world is introduced to the reader, that for the most part that introduction is done very well. I hate infodumping, and that seems to be kept a minimum. I think it helps an awful lot because of how Bujold has paced her novel, and I'm really glad she's such a sure hand at this. I was particularly pleased at reading the action scene at the very beginning of the novel, which helped so much to break up the introduction of information by incorporating the realistic little wrinkles of (1) kill the monster, and (2) survive the aftermath, before (3) the background of the characters and the world in which they live is explained.
I particularly enjoyed the characterizations here. Even secondary characters feel very organic to the plot. Character descriptions are fleshed out; everyone has grown up from some reasonable place in the story; conflicts between characters are written as resulting very naturally from personality and opinion clashes. I was also left wanting to know an awful lot more about the secondary characters, and I really hope the main characters run into them again in a later book.
There were a lot of unanswered questions left dangling at the end of this novel, but then this is the first in a four-volume set. I'm content have some of the more basic whats of this world described here as long of as more detailed whys are explained later.
Oh, yeah, the later books. Not only had I ignored my friend the first time she recommended this series, I ignored her advice too. Now I'm left cranky and scant on sleep following a late-night reading session, and it'll be at least five days before I can get my hands on book two. Grrr.
Linked to bookshare: http://community.livejournal.com/bookshare/1424886.html
Note: Public entry.
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Fantasy/romance
My thoughts: Why were people recommending to me The Lord of Fading Lands when books this awesome were out there instead?
This series had been repeatedly recommended to me, starting nearly a year ago, by a friend of mine. This friend had also advised that I avoid beginning the books too close to bedtime and that I obtain, at the very least, the first two books of this quad so that I could read them back to back. I really need to start taking her word at greater weight.
I waited for a long time before bothering to track down a copy of this first book this series because at the time I had only just read the appallingly bad C.L. Wilson book, Lord of the Fading Lands, and the two series have unfortunate parallels. They are both fantasy/romance books. They are both four-volume sets. They both are written from the dual main characters' points of view. They both focus on uniting two different cultures of peoples. And they both revolve around May/December romances.
The thing is, in this Bujold book, all of these things are done well. The romance between the characters is important to the book, but it's the fantasy element that fuels the plot. The alternating voices of the characters are fluid and focused, and never once devolve into a he felt/she felt situation. The May/December aspect is handled deftly and in a reasonably practical manner. Fawn pretends through about two-thirds of the book to be older than she actually is, and Dag avoids announcing his precise age until directly asked it by Fawn's father. There was a part in the book where the Dag and Fawn were enjoying sex together, Fawn was ready to launch into round two, and Dag was all, Wait! I need more recovery time, which had me laughing aloud.
It is through Fawn's perspective that this fantasy world is introduced to the reader, that for the most part that introduction is done very well. I hate infodumping, and that seems to be kept a minimum. I think it helps an awful lot because of how Bujold has paced her novel, and I'm really glad she's such a sure hand at this. I was particularly pleased at reading the action scene at the very beginning of the novel, which helped so much to break up the introduction of information by incorporating the realistic little wrinkles of (1) kill the monster, and (2) survive the aftermath, before (3) the background of the characters and the world in which they live is explained.
I particularly enjoyed the characterizations here. Even secondary characters feel very organic to the plot. Character descriptions are fleshed out; everyone has grown up from some reasonable place in the story; conflicts between characters are written as resulting very naturally from personality and opinion clashes. I was also left wanting to know an awful lot more about the secondary characters, and I really hope the main characters run into them again in a later book.
There were a lot of unanswered questions left dangling at the end of this novel, but then this is the first in a four-volume set. I'm content have some of the more basic whats of this world described here as long of as more detailed whys are explained later.
Oh, yeah, the later books. Not only had I ignored my friend the first time she recommended this series, I ignored her advice too. Now I'm left cranky and scant on sleep following a late-night reading session, and it'll be at least five days before I can get my hands on book two. Grrr.
Linked to bookshare: http://community.livejournal.com/bookshare/1424886.html
Note: Public entry.