Customer Reviews

Passage [With Earbuds] (Sharing Knife)

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I really like that the author didn't stop after the hero wins the girl. I always like to know what happens after, do they accomplish anything else, what challenges do they face? This storyline delivers. Dag and Fawn start off alone but end up gathering a group of misfits and fellow adventures that become true friends. And yes, they encounter more prejudice and treachery (lakewalkers & farmers), but experience moments of hilarity and lightheartedness.

Dag and Fawn grow into their union learning more about strengthening a budding relationship that goes beyond the marriage bed. They even learn new skills that will help them reach their ultimate goal, IF they decide to continue to the city of the old ones.

Lois Bujold writes fantasy with the same skill and intensity that she writes science fiction, and she's an award winner many times over. Passage is book 3 of 4 in The Sharing Knife series. You don't need to read the first two (but why would you not want to?) to enjoy Passage, there's enough background to make it independant.

Dag is a Lakewalker who's broken with his kin to marry Fawn, a farmer girl. Lakewalkers are the weilders of such magical powers as exist for humans in this world. Farmers are... everyone else. To be fair, there are halfbreeds and farmers with natural abilities. The Lakewalker rule is, Lakewalkers are lakewalkers, farmers are farmers, and never the twain... and Dag has broken that rule in a major way. You see, he wants to become a healer to farmers, which no lakewalker has survived. (If you don't cure everything every time, the farmers think you've hexed them or done it deliberately, and things can get ugly.)

And besides that, lakewalkers are secretive - and Dag is not. He wants farmers to understand both the abilities and the limits of those abilities.

The other aspect is Malices (blight bogles in farmerese.) Out of the ground from whence they appear, they are more powerful mages than any lakewalker, and only lakewalkers have the ability to fight them and kill them.

The rest is impossible to review without spoilers, save that Dag and Fawn and a growing cast of fellow adventurers are traveling down the great river to its mouth, from adventure to adventure.

Bujold is one of my favorite authors, but Passage is not one of her action-packed hilarity-filled page-turners. There are adventures on this river journey and the kind of writing that makes all her books worth reading, but it's a leisurely book that moves with the depth and lack of haste of the river. The Sharing Knife series is, in general, more romantic and less action-oriented than Bujold's Vorkosigan series, but this book has less action than the first two books in the Sharing Knife series. I love the characters and the questions raised by the book--I just hope the pace of the next Sharing Knife installment does a better job of keeping me awake.

I've been a big fan of Lois McMaster Bujold since I discovered her Miles Vorkosigan series, but lately she's taken a turn to the fantastic instead. Some might even say she's gone a bit too far down the road and into the Romance category. Whatever your feelings are, though, her "Sharing Knife" series has been polarizing amongst her fans. Now that I've read the third book in the series, Passage, I have to wonder if Bujold is just playing with various styles and genres, experimenting and offering up the results to her fans like a television chef who decides to try something different. If so, it's a damned good thing that she's so skilful at it.

Passage is essentially a "road" novel (though, in this case, I guess it would be a "river" story), with Dag and Fawn making a trek down the river so that Dag can show his new bride the ocean, something this farmgirl has never seen. In the process, they pick up companions (Fawn's brother, for one), find passage on a riverboat, and share adventures with everybody. A running theme through the novel, one that ties together everything that happens, is Dag's experimentation with the Lakewalker magic and his newfound abilities with it. All Lakewalkers are able to do things with the "ground" that all living beings have, but he's discovered that he's capable of even more, some of it frighteningly close to what the Malices these Lakewalkers are bound to destroy can do. As they journey down the river, Dag learns new things about his abilities while he and Fawn continue to explore their own relationship.

I'll get one criticism of this novel out of the way that I'm sure is being made by many other readers of Passage. There really isn't much of a "plot" to this book. Instead, there are a bunch of little stories that don't really relate to each other except for the fact that they may provide even more companions for Dag, Fawn, and the riverboat crew. The theme of Dag's exploration of his powers is really the only thing that ties all of this together. Otherwise, I could see this book as a series of television episodes, linked together by the characters involved but not having much to do with each other.

Once I got used to that idea, though, I found that the book flowed very smoothly and I enjoyed each individual piece as well as how they affected our heroes. There is actually one other plotline running through the novel, which I'm sure will be dealt with in the final novel: Dag's determination to bring the "Farmers" and "Lakewalkers" together in at least some form of understanding. He continues to make strides in this desire every time he heals one of the other Farmers on the river, or most importantly as he explains in great detail some of the Lakewalker traditions that they've habitually kept hidden from the Farmers. There's every indication that he makes an impression on the people around him, but the jury's still out on whether this will bring about a societal shift. And we see no indication of how the Lakewalkers themselves will be reacting to this (though we do see the horrified, and then slowly begrudging feelings of the two Lakewalkers who end up joining the crew).

Bujold's characterization skills are masterful once again. Every character in this novel, even the bit players, is at least somewhat interesting, and she does a wonderful job with the slowly increasing number of crewmembers and friends that Dag and Fawn accumulate. Berry, the riverboat captain that Fawn befriends and who takes the couple onto her boat, is exceptionally well done, on a quest to find her missing father and betrothed but still alternately witty and tough, depending on the situation. Fawn's brother Whit really comes into his own as well, annoying at first but slowly becoming the man he desperately wants to become.

For those fans who were put off by the "romance" trappings of the first novel, and even a little bit in the second novel, rest assured that they aren't here now. Passage doesn't even have any sex scenes, instead fading to black or just mentioning it cursorily, no worse than any other fantasy or science fiction book with a romance in it. They are still exploring each other, getting to know things that were unknown before, and Fawn is still trying to understand how Lakewalkers work. Others who found their relationship "cloying" in the previous books may have the same problem here, but I don't think so. Fawn's wide-eyed innocence has been tempered by her experiences and their relationship seems a lot more normal this time around.

In exploring the river and Dag's magic, Bujold shows us even more of this world she has created, giving us more detail on how "ground" works and how it's manipulated by the Lakewalkers. There isn't an overarching villain in the book, but the main one we get toward the end of the novel shows us even more how Lakewalkers work, and we see firsthand one of their most important rituals. While we don't see as much of the Farmers, we do see even more how they interact with the Lakewalkers and their prejudices that are borne from ignorance.

Overall, I found Passage to be a hard book to put down, especially near the end. The final 100 pages are especially gripping, but Bujold's characterization carries through the first part of the book. The mini-stories are interesting, but they would be much less so without interesting characters to keep you going. Don't worry about there not being much of a "plot" in the book. There's definitely enough that Bujold's strong writing will get you through. Just sit back and enjoy the ride down the river that Bujold takes you on. You'll be glad you did.

Originally published on Curled Up With a Good Book © David Roy, 2008

If you're like me, you probably first encountered Lois McMaster Bujold through the Vorkosigan saga; and having devoured that, you are now curious about her other work and looking to expand your horizons. All I can say is - look no further! "The Sharing Knife" is a magnificent little tetrology, particularly showcasing Bujold's gift for rich and fascinating characterizations.

Now, a word of warning - this is not Miles we're talking about. The pacing of these books is much less manic than what you are familiar with if you are fresh from the Vorkosiverse. I think it's a mistake to say these books `plod' in any sense of the word, however; the pacing fits the subject matter and the characters at hand (rural farmers and tribesmen all). It is not always instantly apparent that what the characters are doing (mundane though it may seem) is in fact deeply relevant to the plot, but as the story unfolds, all the disparate elements come together into a truly remarkable work. Read these books and stick with them - you will be rewarded a thousandfold!

Passage is the third book in Bujold's Sharing Knife series. It is a continuation of the story begun in Beguilement and Legacy. In Legacy, Dag and Fawn come face-to-face with the bigotry of Dag's Lakewalker clan. Near driven out, Dag chooses to leave instead. But he does so with a mission in mind: to heal the rift between Lakewalker and farmer.

On one level this mission of Dag's is a personal one: acceptance of each of the peoples amongst the other would grant his marriage a greater acceptance. On another level it is a matter of long term survival for all. Because there is little communication between Lakewalker and farmer, the scourge of their land, called malices, could potentially run rampant someday because farmers remain ignorant of the early warning signs. It is with the intention of educating farmers of the malice danger that Dag sets out from his home with his wife, Fawn.

They hire themselves out to a flatboat boss, Berry, and Dag begins his journey of farmer healing and enlightenment. They are joined by two other Lakewalkers and a motley lot of farmers/riverboat-types who are drawn to Dag and Fawn's mission in their own individual ways. Much of the story focuses on this personal quest of Dag's and how, in the process, he also develops his 'ground' (magic) to a level not hereto seen in the world.

That bears some explanation: in Lakewalker society an individual is chosen early on for a specific vocation based upon the promise of their ground. Such vocations include patroller, medicine-maker, ground-setter. The principal responsibility of the Lakewalkers is patrolling the lands in search of malice; most Lakewalkers are selected as patrollers. But some others who demonstrate a greater degree of 'groundsense' may become medicine-makers or, even further, ground-setters, able to manipulate almost any material. Dag has already spent most of his life as a patroller by the time we meet him in Beguilement. In Passage, he begins to experiment with his groundsense and, aided by Fawn's knack for seeing things from her own unique perspective, finds that he has the ability to bridge the gap between patroller, medicine-maker, and ground-setter.

Passage is a good book. It's well-written, flows evenly, and possesses a myriad of interesting yet believable characters. But it also stumbles a bit in its singular purpose. Dag's quest is fun to follow, but it becomes too much of the story or, really, the entire story. Not until the end, when Dag must face a renegade Lakewalker and the mayhem he's caused, does the storyline break away into new territory. In short, I felt Passage would have benefited from a bit more going on. There is some mystery in the form of Boatboss Berry, whose family has disappeared somewhere downriver, but it's not enough.

In summary, once again Bujold doesn't disappoint in delivering a folksy tale with plenty of interesting and intriguing characters and magic, though, in the end, this one could have used an injection of something more. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the conclusion of Dag and Fawn's journey in book four, Horizon.

Light on the action this time but beautiful character portrayal and interaction. Can't wait for the next installment.