One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold has won numerous accolades and awards, including the Nebula and Locus Awards as well as the fantasy and science fiction genre’s most prestigious honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, four times (most recently for
Paladin of Souls
). With The Sharing Knife series, Bujold creates a brand new world fraught with peril, and spins an extraordinary romance between a young farm girl and the brave sorcerer-soldier entrusted with the defense of the land against a plague of vicious malevolent beings. In
Passage
, volume three in Bujold’s breathtaking saga of love, loyalty, and courage in the face of bigotry and dark magic, the devoted wedded lovers Fawn Bluefield and Dag Redwing Hickory are joined by new companions in their quest to find peace, acceptance, and a place in a most dangerous world.
Customer Reviews
Rating Breakdown
★★★★★
60%
(743)
★★★★
25%
(310)
★★★
15%
(186)
★★
7%
(87)
★
-7%
(-87)
Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
AHLEQPL5KXZDVV3ALJ66...
✓ Verified Purchase
Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination
Dag and Fawn begin a long journey to the sea, which even well-travelled Dag has seen only once. Dag struggles to explain Lakewalker secrets to Farmers, though even his farmer bride doesn't reassure some stubborn, superstitious Farmers. Along their journey, Dag and Fawn collect company -- Fawn's pesky brother Whit, a dimwitted farmer boy, a couple of young Lakewalker patrollers, and a flatboat captain searching for her missing father. As Dag slowly heals from malice-inflicted injuries, he begins experimenting with new forms of groundwork, even though the Farmers fear his "magic" and the Lakewalkers disapprove of his revealing their secrets to Farmers. Dag and Fawn also hear rumors of disappearances along the river, leading their party into a dangerous adventure. Dag and Fawn make several passages -- a passage to the sea, a passage between cultures, a passage from patroller to maker -- as they try to open communication between Lakewalkers and Farmers.
As usual in a Bujold book, even the minor charactes are well-drawn. The scene where Fawn explains sharing knives to White is not to be missed; I loved Whit's comparison of sharing knives to a Farmer practice. The story was satisfying, but it also left me eager to see what's on the horizon for Dag, Fawn, and their travelling companions.
25 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AHNOUVM5GTZA735ZQJYF...
✓ Verified Purchase
Floating Down the River
Passage (2008) is the third fantasy novel of The Sharing Knife series, following [[ASIN:0061139068 Legacy]]. In the previous volume, Dag and Fawn were called before the camp council on charges pressed by his brother Dar. The council split on the decision, but Dag and Fawn left Hickory Lake Camp anyway. After the Malice incident in Greenspring, Dag wanted to find another way for the Lakewalkers to relate with the Farmers. Besides, their marriage has caused enough trouble with both Lakewalkers and Farmers.
In this novel, Dag and Fawn go first to her family farm. The twins have moved off to stake their own claims and Whit has -- mostly -- quit his teasing of Fawn, so the visit goes well. At least until shortly before they leave, when Whit decides to go with them.
They leave Fawn's pregnant mare at the farm and take two draft horses that Whit has trained. Naturally, Dag continues to ride Copperhead to protect the Farmers; no telling what that horse will do! The three ride off toward the Grace River.
On the way, Dag and Fawn acquaint Whit with previously unshared knowledge about the Lakewalkers and Malices. Since Fawn knows Whit much better than Dag, she does more of the talking. Yet his confirmations make the discussion more real to Whit.
Reaching Glassforge, Whit learns that his sister and brother-in-law are very well known in the town. They stay at the inn where the wounded had been treated and everybody knows Fawn. They even know that she has killed a Malice. Whit is quite amazed at his sister's fame.
When it comes time to leave Glassforge, Whit changes his mind again. Instead to returning home, he decides to travel further with them. He does sell the horses, but gets a job with the firm that bought them. Now Whit and Fawn are riding the wagons to the river and Dag is still riding Copperhead.
In this story, Dag and Fawn meet many people on the trail and boating down the river. Dag also meets a few Lakewalkers in the river camps. He and Fawn, with some help from Whit, disseminate more information about the Lakewalkers and gain more knowledge of the people themselves. Dag gets to perform a few more medical makings on the Farmer folks and starts to gain a reputation among them as a good healer.
The Lakewalker authorities -- even the Patroller chiefs -- are very much against his activities. They order him to stop treating the wounded and sick Farmers and to cease his information campaign. But events on down the river turn out to require his healing and information.
This tale shows that the Farmers can accept the Lakewalker activities as beneficial and understand the dangers of the Malices. Yet the efforts of Dag and Fawn are only a drop in the bucket. They also need to change the Lakewalkers themselves to gain full acceptance from the Farmers.
The story is far from finished. Dag and Fawn will be back in [[ASIN:0061375365 Horizon]], the fourth volume in this series. Enjoy!
Highly recommended for Bujold fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of exotic societies, unusual magics, and marital romance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
19 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
AHDL47CDC2KXVJ4SAA2Q...
✓ Verified Purchase
The Story I Was Waiting For
As other reviewers have said- this is not the place to start the series. Which I feel is unfortunate, because I was largely uninterested in the drippy romance that was the focal point of the first two volumes. However, Bujold did an excellent job of worldbuilding, and the underlying mystery of the world's history and magic kept me reading in the hope of finding out more.
And in this book, we start to explore the capabilities of Dag's magic, the complex social problems that helped enliven the prior books are attacked (and prove to be *complex*, and not trivial), and we get to see more of Dag and Fawn's world. The 'main' plot's resolution is more or less obvious at the point it is introduced, but the problems of the lively set of secondary characters were more than sufficient to keep me entertained for the journey.
If you were underwhelmed by the first two books, don't stop now. It just got better.
9 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AELYPIYCIZUCXZC2VCOG...
✓ Verified Purchase
Unexpected and wonderful addition to the series
The way the second book in the series ended I thought that the story was complete. Dag and Fawn's romance, that drove much of the story, seemed to reach a point of resolution. Fortunately, I was wrong. Bujold has sent the story curve into another direction entirely. It's more introspective and fills in some of the backstory that makes the Sharing Knife series so compelling; but the plot is still crafted by a master and moves along nicely.
With the new plot direction with its resulting conflicts and characters I look forward to enjoying more installments as much as I did this one.
8 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AHOILRL2GXA764IOABJ6...
✓ Verified Purchase
Another great book from LMB!
This is not your normal fantasy adventure. All three books in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife series remind me of Ursula LeGuin's later Earthsea books in that the stories are about normal people experiencing normal (although trying) times, and getting through them with love and companionship.
The great river of the Wide Green World universe is the backdrop and pace setter of this novel. As we make our unhurried way downstream, we pick up cargo, unfold stories and go where the current takes us. There is a bad guy -- but this is more a story of building community, and deciding how one can start over. The humor is warm and sly. The relationships between characters are real and engaging. Fantasy lovers will be very happy to see a more explicit explanation of the malices (the recurrent evil of this world) and how they work. And groundwork gets a pretty good explanation, as well as demonstration.
I felt there was a lot of backstory included, and I suspect this book will stand alone for first-time readers. But Book One (Beguilement)[[ASIN:0061139076 Beguilement (The Sharing Knife, Book 1)]] and Book Two (Legacy)[[ASIN:0061139068 Legacy (The Sharing Knife, Book 2)]] are well worth picking up, also. Enjoy!
8 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
AEOCQ3MCJOQLS425MLGF...
✓ Verified Purchase
disappointed this time...
I was very disappointed in this latest installment of the Sharing Knife series. Not because the story is uninteresting or poorly told, but because Ms. Bujold has fallen into a trap that one usually sees only in first time authors.
Note that I am a great Bujold fan. She has been my favorite author for some years now. I always pre-order, and always read her latest offering in a day or two. Her stories are always ingenious and well crafted. But this time she has slipped in crafting her basic premise. I'll try to talk about it without specifics, to avoid making a major spoiler for those of you who haven't read the book...
A neophyte author often solves the hero's current dilemma by some sort of gross overkill. For example, to get out of some local crisis, the hero invents an infinite energy machine, an endless matter duplicator, effortless teleportation, and so forth. At which point, the original concerns of the story should become insignificant in view of the enormity of what has just happened. But the author doesn't recognize that, so the story proceeds without its principals realizing that their civilization has just had its economic or power structures turned upside down.
In The Sharing Knife, part 3, this sort of thing happens. We already know that our hero is among the world's best scouts, warriors, healers, and lovers. However, to solve a specific local problem, she makes him into a superhero, able to kill anyone at a distance with a twitch of an eyebrow. If he were an evil man, he could be an emperor the next day. But, of course, he's a nice guy, so we don't worry about that...
Our hero is on a quest to foster trust between the magically talented lakewalkers and the more numerous mundane folks who fear them. Right. So he does this by demonstrating his new superpowers in front of a mundane audience. At the same time, they learn that some lakewalkers are actually evil. What I don't understand is why the plot doesn't then veer off into panic and riots among the mundane populace. Maybe we'll see it in the next book. Anyway, our hero has been given way too much ability this time, and it cheapens the story. Too bad.
7 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AG4MY6IL32D4VMS5VSM5...
✓ Verified Purchase
deeper, scarier, better
"You are what you eat". And at the end of TSK:Legacy, Dag ate a malice (or at least a piece of one). What does that make him?
First off, a warning. If you haven't read the first two books (really, one story) of The Sharing Knife, don't start here. Bujold wisely does not spend a lot of time rehashing old plot points and rebuilding old characters. While you could ignore most of what happened before and treat this book as a stand alone, it would be a mistake. You really need to read the first story (part 1 and 2) to get all the depth out of this one.
Unlike that first story, this was written from the start to be a two-parter. So it feels a bit more complete than the end of TSK:Beguilement did. But there is clearly more to say with these characters. Plus, now having traveled to the ocean, they still have to come home. Travels change a person, but it takes coming home to really drive this in.
Dag and Fawn undertake a honeymoon trip to the sea, which also turns into something of a voyage of discovery for Dag in particular. TSK:Beguilement and TSK:Legacy were more about Fawn's growth, which might be expected given the age and experience discrepency between Fawn and Dag. But in TSK:Passage their roles are reversed, and it is Fawn who serves as Dag's foundation while he undergoes a profound change in his ideas about everything he always believed about his world.
Along the way, they touch the lives of various people (most of whom are spritually or physically wounded, some of whom they cure, and some of whom they kill). The reader is also treated to a small slice of life along the big river (based on memoirs of people who worked riverboats along the Mississippi in the time before steam power).
And in the end, Fawn and especially Dag finally face up to the fact that their self-appointed task of healing the whole world is, at the same time, both too big for them and yet also something they have to try and do. Because if not them, then who?
"It's too easy," several characters echo after having killed someone. It's much easier to kill than to heal. But Dag and Fawn never really thought their path was going to be easy. Now they are finding out just how hard it can be, and just what can go wrong if they fail.
5 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AGLGJKSTF2TAK5K4UGGT...
✓ Verified Purchase
Arguably, the best Sharing Knife book
Lois Bujold has created a world rich and characters and mystery. This is the third in the series which should be read in order. All are well worth the reading. If you enjoy the first book, you will enjoy the next two. Each has a distinctly different feel. Unlike too many authors, Bujold doesn't simply repeat earlier works, but expands upon them. This continues the development of the two main characters, Dag and Spark. This concentrates on Dag's development and learning, as told largely through Spark's perspective. The book consists of a mostly leisurely trip down the river to the ocean. Lois Bujold uses the trip to slowly delve into the mysteries surrounding the world and its ground. It answers many questions raised in the first two books, reaches a clear termination, but raises more new questions and problems than were answered.
Bujold's Vorkosigan series demonstrates her ability to take an original novel and extend the series in new interesting and unexpected directions. The Sharing Knife series lacks the action of the Vorkosigan series, but provides deeper characterization. The villains and heroes, if any, are less black and white. There is room for further books that continue to explore this world. I await the next in the series.
5 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AFADQ3GJQPKCW6U6XXZ2...
✓ Verified Purchase
Earlier books in this series were good. This one's great.
Middle books in a series are often the hardest for an author to pull off. You need to move the story along, but you can't resolve too much or there's no reason to continue to volume 3. Yet it has to be good enough that readers *want* to keep reading. Even with an author as fine as Bujold, the second book in the Sharing Knife series suffered from this problem. Certainly, several reviewers were disappointed by Legacy. If you aren't sure if it's worth it to keep going and read Passage -- don't worry. Because she fulfills her promises. This is simply great.
Dag and Fawn, now four months into their marriage, head down the river to the sea, as that was one of Dag's promises to her. But the journey is an emotional one as well as geographic, as the couple tries to accomplish the goals they set for themselves: sharing understanding between "Lakewalkers" and "Farmers." They interact with lots of people from different levels of the society (I don't want to give away too much), and around every bend in the river they -- and we readers -- learn something new.
The writing has the same sweet caring and good humor you've come to expect from the characters in this series. Darnit, Bujold just creates such _likable_ people!
It's a VERY enjoyable read, I assure you. It's also good dense storytelling. Yes, it's totally different from Vor and Chalion. I like that; Bujold isn't becoming predictable.
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AEE22C6JQC3TSN22ZTQO...
✓ Verified Purchase
Into Uncharted Waters
The third book in Bujold's Sharing Knife series takes the reader on a boat trip down the river to the sea. Both the newlyweds are moving into uncharted territory in this book. Fawn Bluefield, the young farmer girl, is traveling to the sea, something she never could have expected to do. Her Lakewalker husband, Dag Redwing Hickory, is coming to terms with his exile from his people and his former occupation. He is motivated to explore his developing "ground sense" powers of healing and making both as a means of earning a living and to try to develop a bridge between his own nomadic magical people and the settled farmers that his bride comes from.
As he explains the long malice war to the farmers he and Fawn encounter, he breaches the curtain of secrecy that his people and culture have built up around their sharing knives. This saga of Bujold's has grown ever more complex with each book. The first was a simple love story about an unusual pairing. The second illuminated the clash of cultures represented by the lovers. This third book takes us one more stage on the journey, offering frightening glimpses of a renegade exile of the Lakewalkers, cast out for the same "crime" that Dag has committed: marrying outside of his own people. There is no sense that this closes the story of these unusual lovers reaching across the divide between their peoples. In fact, it can't end here.
Bujold gives us a deeper glimpse into this imaginary world and with this river journey she manages to recall other narratives that center on other rivers such as HUCK FINN and LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Filled with colorful characters and touches of humor, Bujold invokes that sense of wonder which is the hallmark of great fantasy and makes us experience life more wisely which is a hallmark of great literature. The previous two books could stand alone although they were stronger together, but they are required reading for this one. One wonders where Bujold will take us from here.
