Still home sick, still enough energy to read but not do much else. So last night and this afternoon, with some Nyquil-induced sleep between, I read The Sharing Knife: Horizon (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2009), the final volume in a four-book fantasy series about the cross-cultural romance between a woman from ordinary, non-magical stock (farmers) and a Lakewalker man (possessed of certain magical powers useful in fighting the evils of their world).
It's an excellent conclusion to the series, but the key word is conclusion. If you want to read these books, you really need to go back to the beginning and start with Beguilement. Bujold has gradually raised the stakes and the scale of the story all along from what started out as mostly the romance of the principals, and the way she wraps it up feels right. Fawn and Dag haven't solved their world's problems, but they've planted the seeds for greater cooperation between their peoples. There's satisfying closure, but with plenty of loose ends should Bujold choose to revisit this world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I kept trying to get hold of Horizon at Borders, but it turns out there was a Borders snafu and it didn't show up at many of their outlets. (May have by now.) When I do get it, I'll reread the first two, then read 3 and 4, and then I can comment intelligently! :-)
(BTW, feel better soon!)
Cara
Okay, I've now read all four Sharing Knife books!
I do like them. Quite a bit. But definitely not as well as her Vorkosigan books, or the first two Chalion books.
But now I keep waiting for someone to ground-strip me! Or bump my ground. :-)
And now that I'm done reading all four in a row (two re-read, two new to me) I'm facing going cold turkey, and it's hard! I may just trot out the third Chalion book (only read it once) to help me ease off gently...
Cara
Post a Comment