The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
This may be the longest I've gone between buying a book and reading that book. I picked it up at a used book store a year and a half ago because it was written by Lois McMaster Bujold. But then I found out that it was part of a series and, this being Bujold, I knew I'd want to read the whole series. What's more, the series is supposed to be more like a single novel broken into four installments than four distinct books. So I waited and looked for the other books and never found them and this one sat neglected on my shelf.
This may have been a good thing. In my quest for the rest of the series I learned that, while it's billed as fantasy, it's much closer to romance. That knowledge helped me adjust my expectations. I knew going in that the book was going to focus more on the relationship between Dag and Fawn than on the supernatural malices that populated their world. And in reading The Vorkosigan Series I came to expect Bujold's fondness for May-December romances. So the age difference between Dag and Fawn didn't surprise me as much as it might have. Although this is certainly the biggest age difference she's ever written between romantic partners.
All this to say that I had my expectations thoroughly adjusted by the time I picked up this book. So I enjoyed it more than I otherwise might have. I knew what to expect, and I wasn't caught off guard by a woman dating a man old enough to be her father (older than her actual father). I wasn't as disappointed by the seeming disappearance of the fantastical elements, as I'm expecting them to come back at least long enough to be resolved in future books.
So while this isn't my favorite work by Bujold, it was an enjoyable read. All the more so for being relatively quick. Fawn is a fantastic character, and I'm a little bit in love with her myself. She's wonderfully curious and determined, which leads to her driving a fair amount of the action. And Dag is properly brooding, though he comes around quickly. It could be my foundational exposure to Buffy, but this story hit a lot of the same buttons as the Willow/Angel ship (never canon, but I read a ton of fanfic in high school and college). Which made it half nostalgic for me, even though the setting is entirely new.
This may have been a good thing. In my quest for the rest of the series I learned that, while it's billed as fantasy, it's much closer to romance. That knowledge helped me adjust my expectations. I knew going in that the book was going to focus more on the relationship between Dag and Fawn than on the supernatural malices that populated their world. And in reading The Vorkosigan Series I came to expect Bujold's fondness for May-December romances. So the age difference between Dag and Fawn didn't surprise me as much as it might have. Although this is certainly the biggest age difference she's ever written between romantic partners.
All this to say that I had my expectations thoroughly adjusted by the time I picked up this book. So I enjoyed it more than I otherwise might have. I knew what to expect, and I wasn't caught off guard by a woman dating a man old enough to be her father (older than her actual father). I wasn't as disappointed by the seeming disappearance of the fantastical elements, as I'm expecting them to come back at least long enough to be resolved in future books.
So while this isn't my favorite work by Bujold, it was an enjoyable read. All the more so for being relatively quick. Fawn is a fantastic character, and I'm a little bit in love with her myself. She's wonderfully curious and determined, which leads to her driving a fair amount of the action. And Dag is properly brooding, though he comes around quickly. It could be my foundational exposure to Buffy, but this story hit a lot of the same buttons as the Willow/Angel ship (never canon, but I read a ton of fanfic in high school and college). Which made it half nostalgic for me, even though the setting is entirely new.
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