Legacy (The Sharing Knife, Book 2)

[This book is not a stand-alone novel. It is part two of a two-part work, and can not be read by itself. In this review, I will discuss "The Sharing Knife" as a whole.]

The Sharing Knife is a dramatic change of pace for Lois Bujold. She became known for her series of science fiction stories centering on the character of Miles Vorkosigan. Then she tried her hand at fantasy works in medieval settings (The Spirit Ring, Curse Of Chalion, etc.). But in each case, the stories featured extremely well-drawn and fascinating characters experiencing and resolving a plot crisis.

What's different in this work is the "plot crisis" element. It really doesn't exist in the same way as her other books. Instead, we are dropped into a situation that is something of a stalemate between the forces of chaos, the forces of order, and the forces of growth. The chaos is represented by "malices", creatures of magic that literally erupt from the ground to suck the life force from the world. The order is supplied by the Lakewalkers, descendants of the mage-lords who created the malice plague in the first place. And the growth is supplied by the Farmers, ordinary people who live in uneasy symbiosis with the Lakewalkers. The Farmers can not protect themselves from the malices, but the Lakewalkers rely on the Farmers for tools and goods that can not be produced in nomadic camps.

Into this three-part dynamic, Bujold drops a love affair between a burnt-out Lakewalker patroller and a young Farmer girl who is too bright and restless to really fit into her society. The two accidentally join together to kill a malice and end up falling in love.

The first book details the initial relationship, the reaction to it from Farmer society, and the marriage between Fawn and Dag. This second book starts up immediately after, with Fawn and Dag attempting to find some acceptance in Lakewalker society.

In a previous Bujold story, this would have resulted in some sort of shared triumph that resolved the basic crisis of the plot. But in this book, the shared triumph does resolve something on a personal level for Fawn and Dag, but it very much does not bring about a plot resolution. Unlike Miles Vorkosigan, they are able to realize that they can not change the world by force of will alone, or even by the righteousness of their cause. The situation they are in is unsolvable by its very nature.

And so, Bujold instead crafts a story that is more pure romance than any of her other works. Instead of resolving the plot crisis, she is able to just have her characters realize that they must look after their own lives on their own terms. They can't change the Farmers or the Lakewalkers, and they can't solve the malices. But they can choose to be true to their own love and honor. And who knows? Since business as usual isn't really working, maybe their choice will turn out to save the world some other day.

I reviewed "Beguiled" and my advice to myself and others at that time was basically "wait and read part II before passing final judgment." I was pretty irate that the book had been split into two parts, and I'm still not crazy about it. And if you haven't read Beguiled, you really must do that before reading Legacy. I just don't think Legacy can stand by itself...

So, what to say? Lois McMaster Bujold is a beautiful writer. Her ability to tell a story is stellar. And I really can't think of any still living, still writing writer who I have read in the last decade who is a better writer than Bujold. And her superior writing skills shine forth from every page in The Sharing Knife. And the "reading is easy", at least it was for me. I read Legacy in one sitting and didn't notice the passing of time at all.

My problem (not hers) is that I really didn't *enjoy* reading the book. Does that make sense? Reading a story where the primary external conflict for the two protagonists are their disfunctional families and incompatible cultures is not a fun read. I adore Bujold's Miles' books (SciFi is my genre of choice and I have been a "Trekkie" since 1968) and I really like her more recent fantasy series set in the Chalion universe but this particular story was too ... well, not to my taste. I've read Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, all the really great American novelists and maybe Bujold is heading down that path. She's that good. But I read those novels because I took a LOT of literature classes when I was in college... Back in those days, in my own free time, I watched Star Trek reruns, read the "Dune" books, Tolkien, Zelazny's Amber series, and ... well, I won't go on. You get the point. I do read "seriously" but non-fiction. My last non-fiction read dealt with the societal and economic impact of the end of slavery in the deep South in the years immediately following the civil war, so there! ... but I'm shallow in my 'reading for enjoyment' tastes. Very shallow. Sigh.

I'm not going to spoil the plot, but I would have preferred if the very last two pages of the very last chapter of Legacy were the actual 3rd chapter of The Sharing Knife (one chapter for Beguiled, one chapter for Legacy and then ... the rest of the plot continuing onwards from there revealing the back story slowly slowly as the adventure continued. (What is coming next on down the road seems much more interesting to me than anything and everything that came before and took two books to describe.)

Four stars ... and really, it deserves five stars, except for, well, except for even though it sticks in my mind, I don't like any of those characters... they're just too messed up and carrying way too much baggage and I get enough of that in real life. Will I buy her next book set in this universe? You bet! Wouldn't miss it. She's a great writer. Read Beguiled, read Legacy.

p.s. and I don't beg for another Miles book. If I have read between the lines correctly, Lois is going to kill Milles off for good if we rabid fans don't leave it alone. He's married, he's happy, he's father of twins, and he's out of my life and I wish him a long one...

I am a real fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's work - she was initially known for her Miles Vorkosigan series of nearly 20 books but I actually preferred her foray into fantasy, "The Curse Of Chalion" and "Paladin Of Souls" particularly. "The Sharing Knife" duology (the first book called "Beguilement" and then this one, "Legacy") is set in a different time and world than that of the Chalion/Hallowed Hunt books - this world is more like an agrarian early America.

My first comment is that if you haven't read "The Sharing Knife: Beguilement" yet then you need to buy that book before you even consider this one. These two books are a duology but, unlike pretty much all Bujold's other books, I felt this one would have been rather a struggle if read on its own. So if you haven't read "Beguilement" then get it first and don't read on as this review of "Legacy" has spoilers for the first book.

**SPOILERS FOR BOOK 1***
This book starts off where "Beguilement" left off - Dag and Fawn are married and are making their way to Dag's home. We have gone through the difficulties Fawn faced with her family's dubious acceptance of her new husband - now we get the same from Dag's people's point of view. Only worse.

A lot of this book seems to be about cross-cultural clashes. The Lakewalkers and Farmers are different groups of people and it seems that neither can accept the other. Dag's marriage with Fawn has actually broken some Lakewalker rules and despite him being a semi-hero it seems his friends and relatives don't cut him a lot of slack.

The first half of the book is about Fawn and Dag trying to settle down in Lakewalker territory - and struggling. They also try to find out more about the primed Sharing Knife that Fawn now has - it seems this is something a little outside Lakewaker experience. Then they hear of another Malice/Blight Bogle attack and Dag has to go on patrol, Fawn being left behind to fend for herself amongst unfriendly people.

There's a lot in this book about the "grounds", the Lakewalker magic which Fawn cannot see. There's also more about the Malice and how it takes over people and ground as well as some interesting vignettes into Lakewalker life. I enjoyed the book but I didn't always know quite what was going on with some of the more esoteric "ground" discussions.

Lois Bujold's writing style is as appealing as ever. As usual her characters carry on quite a lot of inner monologues so you get to understand how different people interpret the same events. I still have some residual doubts about the wisdom of a 55 year old man marrying an 18 year old woman but, after all, this is fiction. Poor Fawn has to deal with not only being nearly 40 years younger than her husband but also being rather inept in the Lakewalker territory, being a farmer girl. Her skills, and she does have some, aren't really appreciated except by Dag and she puts up with an amazing amount of insults.

I enjoyed "Legacy" - it was a fun read, had some nice moments of romance as well as a message about tolerance between different groups - but I didn't feel it was quite up to the standard of "The Curse Of Chalion". It still deserves 5 stars though!

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book, [...] Helen Hancox 2007

There is a book by Anne McCaffery, where a plague hits Pern. It is very well written, but when you get done reading it you feel sick and depressed. Ms. McCaffery has since said that she had the flu, and was recovering from it when she was writing that particular book. The general malaise carries across to the reader.
Well, this book is Lois McMaster Bujold's version of that book. It is still as well written as all of her other books, and yet, when I finished it, I was depressed by it. I have been a fan of hers from the very first book, and have enjoyed (and reread multiple times) every other book she has written, I've even tracked down her few short stories, this one book I don't ever intend to reread.

This is part two of the romance fantasy started in Beguilement. In that book, Fawn and Dag met, became entangled by a sharing knife, fell in love and eventually won the acceptance of and the consent of Fawn's farmer family.

Now Dag takes his new wife home to meet his mother. Things do not go well. Lakewalker society and culture is very rigid about not marrying Outsiders.

Fawn may not have magic in her blood, but her courage, common sense and innovative thinking show how she has blossomed under Dag's encouragement.

This reads like an impassioned family drama. It's not the space opera of the Vorkosigan series or the grand spiritual quests of the Chalion books. It demonstrates the incredible reach of Lois McMaster Bujold, who writes literature disguised as genre fiction. Highly recommended.

If I hadn't read every single one of the Vorkosigan series, I would chalk it up to yet another campy fantasy-writing author. Another reviewer is kindly willing to consider differences in plot as an explanation. Here are my theories:
Lois McM.Bujold has been abducted, and a lesser writer is using her name.
LMB got caught on a deadline she couldn't meet, and brought out her early teen-years first novels, and is passing them off as new stuff.
LMB has some hefty college tuitions to pay, and is churning out as much mass-appeal, romance-fantasy as she can, quality be damned.
We know she can do extraordinary things with characters, socio-political intrigue, and even romance and weave them all around fast-paced action and adventure, regardless of "resolution" of a crisis or not!
So what's with this? The disappointment is such that just about everything becomes annoying, including Fawn's stupid "knee-dip" greetings (which no one else at the Lake camp seems to do, and she wants to fit in? Hmmm...). And the writing? Well. Just about every thoughtful, manly man, or woman trying to be manly man, starts a spoken thought with, "Well." That's how we know, ten thousand times over, that they are thoughtful and manly. Yes, the book is trite enough in the quality of the writing, (not the plot, which is ok), that one becomes distracted by these trite, petty details.
Someone please rescue the real LMB.

I find myself unable to quarrel with Bujold's decisions on how many books her story will take to tell. I find the length and the contents of all of them perfect. I don't really read Bujold for the plots, although they are fiendishly suspensful, or the landscapes, which are so well drawn you can feel as well as see them. Instead, I experience any given Bujold novel as a whole, complete and sufficient, and indivisible into the standard parts, although the parts are present and moving with great precision. It's the characters who compel my attention--the imaginary physical, social, and political worlds they inhabit flow naturally from the circumstances Bujold has imagined for them. In The Sharing Knife, we are given a world in which a man can make fire flies dance for his beloved after they have both killed a monster who blights every form of life it can reach, and I find both scenes believable.

There is a post-apocalyptic feel about these novels. The Malices who threaten the fragile divided society portrayed in these books were once lords of the earth, and are reduced to mindless destruction as their only path to rebirth. The Lakewalkers spend their lives hunting malices to protect the farmers whom the Lakewalkers also condescend to. Both the Lakewalkers and the farmers have their own technologies and strong social structures, but they exist in a tenuous state of equilibrium, and considerable misunderstanding of each other. The Sharing Knife brings two strong individuals from each society together, and uses their union to test both social structures, as well as the individuals, fiercely. The story of Dag Redwing Hickory and Faun Bluefield is full of what I suspect is the best kind of adventure: discovery. Dag and Faun learn much about themselves, each other, their families, and the greater societies they represent in the course of these two novels. And at the end of Legacy, they are perfectly positioned to learn more, to explore more, and to begin the work of reconciliation that both societies need. I can imagine even greater works in the future of both characters, although I would prefer that Bujold imagined more of this story for me.

And when I write prose like the paragraph above, I feel I've constructed the answer to a study question for a great book. I hate study questions. The power of novels is not in the precise generalizations you can reduce them to, but in the particular moments of life your imagination experiences when you read them. The power of Bujold is in the way she finds for Faun Bluefield to make a good marriage string, and the terror Faun must endure to save Dag's life, and in Dag's constant appreciation of Faun's irrepressible self, and how he releases buried powers in himself to put shattered glass together again. That's why Bujold is a very superior novelist--she makes you think about very important things while suffering and triumphing with the most human of beings. Bujold teaches lessons which don't sink in until the moments of repose after the adventures subside. The worlds she creates are like life--horrible, wonderful, deeply frustrating, exquisite, and challenging, but concentrated into a few hundred pages of graceful prose.

This book is the second half of a single two-volume story, and should not be read before its partner-book, The Sharing Knife - Beguilement.

This review contains spoilers for the first book.

Perhaps because of the two-volume format, I was expecting a degree of symmetry in the story-arc: first volume, Dag and Fawn overcome the prejudices of Fawn's Farmer family and culture; second volume, Fawn and Dag overcome the prejudices of Dag's Lakewalker family and culture. The culture and family conflict are certainly presented honestly in both books, but by no means as a mirror-image. Fawn is used to being belittled by her brothers and benignly ignored by her own family. That pattern is repeated - less benignly - in a Lakewalker culture that values "groundsense" far more than Fawn's uncommon "common" sense.

The conflict between lakewalkers and farmers is set in the context of a longstanding war between humans and life-sucking malices. I am more than eager - I would say I am desperate - to read the next book in this series, and find out how the various conflicts develop or resolve.

Legacy is book two in the Sharing Knife series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. It continues the story of Dag and Fawn, picking up pretty much where they left off at the end of Beguilement (book one).

I enjoyed Beguilement, but I have to say that I didn't like Legacy nearly as much. I thought the dispute with Dag's family was drawn out for far too long, and it wasn't all that interesting. I got to read a lot about Fawn and Dag cooking plumkins and visiting the Lakewalker camp and its people, which is not how I expected to spend much of the second book. Whilst it was nice at first to learn a bit more about the Lakewalker ways, it was just overdone and I was dissapointed with the authors reliance on having the characters explain absuloubtly everything through dialogue. I didn't even find the Lakewalkers all that interesting to begin with-they weren't very original-and this didn't help.

It isn't until about chapter 10 (possibly later) that the main threat of the book is actually introduced. I enjoyed Legacy a little more once the story moved away (for the most part) from the Lakewalker camp. Sadly, it was over all too quickly, and I found the last 5 or so chapters about as difficult to get through as the first 10. (In a book of 19 chapters, this doesn't leave much actual space for the main conflict) Although there are some nice worldbuilding ideas, the story on a whole is only just "okay". There's little original about it, and whereas book one seemed to balance this problem by having strong characters and an excellent mix of romance and action/conflict, book two somehow falls short. In fact, there were times when I just couldn't stand Dag OR Fawn.

I'd had high hopes for the Sharing Knife series after reading the first book, but after being so dissapointed by Legacy, I will not be continuing with it. This is a shame, as Lois McMaster Bujold is capable of writing great fantasy - try her Curse of Chalion, if you want to see her at her best. Avoid Legacy though, it wasn't that great.

Legacy (2007) is the second fantasy novel in The Sharing Knife series, following [[ASIN:0061139076 Beguilement]]. In the previous volume, Fawn and Dag returned to her home. There he discovered that his lost left hand can manifest as a magical extension. Then they were married according to Farmer customs. They also followed Lakewalker traditions by exchanging colored strings imbued with their own ground magic. After the wedding reception, they saddled up and took the road to his home at Hickory Lake.

In this novel, Dag and Fawn try to get to reach Hickory Lake before his Aunt Mari and the other riders return from patrol. Still they are not in too much of a hurry, enjoying the sunny weather as they ride along. But when the sky starts to look stormy, they press harder to reach the Lakewalker camp.

As they get close, Dag wonders who to approach first. After talking it over with Fawn, he decides to see Farbolt Crow -- the Camp Captain -- before facing his mother. When they reach the Patroller building, Mari is there demanding a search for him. Their appearance turns the morose conference into a welcoming party.

After bringing Farbolt and Mari up to date, Dag and Fawn travel to the Redwing camp to talk to Dar. Dag's brother is not very accepting of the marriage, but listens to his story about the sharing knife and then responds with his opinion. They all leave the workshop and go back to the Redwing Tent for supper.

Dag's mother is very displeased about his marriage. During the argument, Dag responds to her remarks by leaving the tent. Dag and fawn spend the night in Dar's workshop. The next day, they get their own tent -- made of hides instead of logs -- and set it up within the camp of his Aunt Mari.

In this story, Dag finds that his phantom hand has other uses than remaking a glass bowl. He discusses the mysterious appearance of the hand with Hoharie, the camp healer. Then he tries to show her the phantom hand to no avail. But when Othan tries to heal his right arm, the hand suddenly appears and yanks ground from the apprentice upon the opening of Dag's shields.

Dar later brings a council complaint against Dag on his mother's behalf to disallow the marriage. Before it can be heard by the camp council, however, Farbolt receives an emergency request for aid from the Raintree patrollers. A malice has emerged within the farmer town of Greenspring and then attacked the Lakewalker camp at Bonemarsh. The death toll is high.

Dag is asked to be the Captain of the Hickory Lake contingent going to Raintree. After talking it over with Fawn, he accepts and they prepare for him to leave the following dawn. That evening, however, Dag performs some exotic magic to allow Fawn to be aware of his life and location.

This story further introduces Fawn to the history and culture of the Lakewalkers. She learns that the Lakewalkers consider themselves to be descendants of minor lords. Yet she sees their lifestyle as poor and squalid.

Above all else, she learns that the Lakewalkers are prepared to leave their current campgrounds and move elsewhere to escape any threat. Yet their obsession with mobility is beginning to change. Their tents are often log cabins with one open side and they are failing to follow the custom of destroying the more permanent structures every ten years. They are beginning to enjoy a more stable style of living, although most Lakewalkers still migrate between the summer and winter camps.

This tale concludes with another major change in the life of Dag and Fawn. The next volume probably will involve more travel, new cultures, and further discoveries. Stay tuned!

Highly recommended for Bujold fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of magical quests, exotic cultures and passionate romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin