50 in '08: 21
Jun. 17th, 2008 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Title: The Sharing Knife: Passage
Authors: Lois McMaster Bujold
Length: 437 pages
Yes, I read the entire book since I got home at 5:30pm. And made dinner in that time too. A hundred pages an hour is easy, particularly when it's quality reading, which Bujold consistently is. This is book three of The Sharing Knife series, and I think arguably the best so far. I say arguably because it was dealing partly with Fawn's family--and I've liked her and Dag's interactions with them in the other books--and partly with new characters. It wasn't as complex as all the dealings in the second book with the Lakewalker folk, far too many of whom (Dag's kin in particular) were filled with poison. Bujold here confronts the central theme of this series head-on: how do you reconcile two cultures who don't even want to talk to each other? It's a theme as applicable in the real world as in fiction, and arguably as unanswerable. I'm oddly cast in mind of T.H. White's The Once and Future King, in this being fiction that seriously tackles the question of how do you change the world? without taking the cheap way out of pretending to find an answer. I've generally found The Sharing Knife series to be not as good as Bujold's Chalion series but better than The Spirit Ring, her previous attempt at writing fantasy instead of sci-fi... this book, I think, sets TSK equal with Chalion.
Verdict: Highly recommended. I'm rereading it tomorrow.
Authors: Lois McMaster Bujold
Length: 437 pages
Yes, I read the entire book since I got home at 5:30pm. And made dinner in that time too. A hundred pages an hour is easy, particularly when it's quality reading, which Bujold consistently is. This is book three of The Sharing Knife series, and I think arguably the best so far. I say arguably because it was dealing partly with Fawn's family--and I've liked her and Dag's interactions with them in the other books--and partly with new characters. It wasn't as complex as all the dealings in the second book with the Lakewalker folk, far too many of whom (Dag's kin in particular) were filled with poison. Bujold here confronts the central theme of this series head-on: how do you reconcile two cultures who don't even want to talk to each other? It's a theme as applicable in the real world as in fiction, and arguably as unanswerable. I'm oddly cast in mind of T.H. White's The Once and Future King, in this being fiction that seriously tackles the question of how do you change the world? without taking the cheap way out of pretending to find an answer. I've generally found The Sharing Knife series to be not as good as Bujold's Chalion series but better than The Spirit Ring, her previous attempt at writing fantasy instead of sci-fi... this book, I think, sets TSK equal with Chalion.
Verdict: Highly recommended. I'm rereading it tomorrow.
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Date: 2008-06-18 03:31 pm (UTC)