F$@& The Sharing Knife

I am not a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold.

Her most famous series is the Vorkosigan Saga, which I just could not get into.  The lead character, Miles Vorkosigan, who starts with disabilities, promptly falls into the “Never wrong, all too rarely a setback” protagonist I alluded to in my Honorverse review.  Admittedly, I didn’t get too far into the series because of that, so I really don’t know if that particular problem continued.  Whatever, I didn’t like the first few books and life is too short to keep reading novels you don’t like.

The Chalion Saga was better.  At least I finished the first one, and it had an intriguing main character which kept me hooked.  The follow up stories didn’t have that good characterization and I put them down after 50-75 pages.

But I loved The Sharing Knife.  

First the setting is great.  Its post-post apocalyptic.  It takes place in North America several thousand years after some great war.  Everything west of the Mississippi river is a barren wasteland (known as the Western Levels), and everything east needs to watch for pieces of that great war occasionally resurfacing (as ‘malices’).

The characters are strong.  The female lead, Fawn, initially plays the ‘fish out of water’ archetype, so Bujold can explain how this world works.   She’s not a passenger however but a genuine protagonist, and her ignorance mirrors her peoples (referred to as Farmers) and educating folks turns into a central theme.   The male lead, Dag, is initially Fawn’s guide to his peoples (Lakewalkers) secrets.  As the story progresses and Dag grows as a character, Fawn turns into his guide.

The world utilizes magic, referred to as ‘ground’.  Ground is more like the concept of ‘the Force’ then sorcery.  Lakewalkers can use ground to sense things, to do minor manipulations, but there’s very little earth shattering sorcery.  The antagonists, ‘Malices’, are a combination of locusts and the movie Highlander.  They suck the life out of everything they come into contact with, and gain the knowledge and power of anything they kill.  They have but one weakness, a Lakewalkers death can be stored in a bone knife, and a malice stabbed with a Sharing Knife is taught how to die.

The series explores a lot of neat themes too.  Lakewalkers patrol and hunt for malices because they are the only ones who can kill them.  But they are secretive, so become feared and unappreciated.  It’s an interesting societal dynamic, they protect a people they despise (some exaggeration for effect…).  Dag is a Lakewalker and Fawn is a Farmer, so when they marry, it’s kind of a deal.  And the clash of these societies is also interesting and is explored throughout the series.

4 books in the series.  I think the 3^rd is the strongest, and the 2^nd is the weakest.    But very much worth my time and I enjoyed them very much.