Image of Little Dragon

 

Beguilement

The Wide Green World series, volume 1: The Sharing Knife series, Book 1

Harper Voyager
Fiction, Fantasy/Romance
Themes: Cross-Genre, Epics, Ghosts and Spirits
**+

Description

All her life, diminutive Fawn Bluefield has been picked on and belittled - so, when an ill-advised tryst with a betrothed neighbor leaves her carrying a bastard child, she runs away before she can be told, yet again, how stupid and childishly she behaves. In Glassforge, she aims to build a new life for herself... but plans change abruptly when she's snatched from the road by an inhuman captor, then rescued by a mysterious stranger.
Dag was stalking a dangerous malice, a dark demonlike creature that twists beasts and men while sucking the very life from the ground, when he rescues a young farmer girl. He means to leave her somewhere safe while he continued his hunt, but events conspire to draw her into the very thick of things... where Fawn winds up saving his life. In the process, she becomes tangled up in the deep Lakewalker magic of their malice-killing sharing knives. This has never happened in the history of his people - farmers like her don't even have "groundsense," the extrasensory skills to detect life around them - and it's beyond his ability to unravel.
Regular folk and Lakewalkers rarely mingle, and when they do, it rarely ends well. People consider Lakewalkers to be sorcerers and cannibals, while Lakewalkers sneer at the ignorant, land-bound life of "farmers", as they disparagingly call those tied to fields or towns. But something more than mere obligation binds Fawn and Dag, a force more powerful than magic and prejudice.

Review

I'm on a middling-to-bad reading streak lately. Having heard excellent things about this author and series from multiple sources, I figured it would be a good bet to break that streak.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Despite being set in a fantasy world and presenting some interesting fantasy concepts (such as the malices and the Lakewalker sharing knives), it's actually more of a romance at heart... and not a great romance, at that. The characters almost read as caricatures of romance novel extremes, though, making it difficult to take the core relationship seriously. He's dark, handsome, and tall - invariably the tallest one in any scene - bearing many scars from a life of pain and loss. She's so small she's mistaken for a child at more than one point, with large doe-like eyes and a tendency to need rescuing, not to mention an innocence (particularly in physical matters) that stretches credulity beyond the breaking point, even given that she's less than half Dag's age with scarcely a sliver of his life experience. In one scene, Dag and Fawn are riding double while the subject of marital relations comes up, and Dag must spend a few pages explaining concepts of manual stimulation to the clueless girl... who doesn't recognize the reaction this is prompting in the Lakewalker sitting right behind her, even when her hand comes into contact with evidence of that reaction. I can (almost) buy a girl raised in a conservative, backwoods lifestyle not knowing certain aspects of physical pleasure, but Fawn was pregnant when the story started, and being raped (an incident with almost zero lasting impact on the character, once again reducing the violation of a female to a cheap plot device) when Dag found her... a rape during which her first cynical thought was that at least he couldn't impregnate her. Clearly, she's seen the equipment in action, so to speak, and knows what does what. And she still can't recognize a hard-on when she feels it, nor does she understand why Dag has such a peculiar look in his eye afterward? I honestly thumped my head on the Kindle cover at this point. Was this supposed to be some sort of straight-faced parody?
The romance between these two opposites creates a lot of trouble for both of them; neither culture respects the other, even aside from the issue of Lakewalker "groundsense" and other matters that make cross-breeding inadvisable. Love, however, keeps its own council, and it can be downright selfish at times, apparently. As the relationship heats up, the matter of Fawn the farmer being tied up in Lakewalker magic via an unintended effect of the sharing knives is pretty much swept off the page as the story focuses on the more important matters of convincing Dag's companion Lakewalkers and, later on, Fawn's kinfolk to accept their May-December (more like February-December, given the vast, borderline-creepy age difference - the creepiness factor upped by her childlike physical appearance) relationship. Some of the problems, particularly in Fawn's hometown, are so contrived I couldn't even begin to take them seriously... again, pointing to the possibility that this was written in parody, especially when literally nobody else in the novel seems to recognize how perfect Fawn is, not even her own family, save Dag.
There are some nice points to the tale. I liked the world, what I could see of it, particularly the concept of the sharing knives. Fawn could demonstrate some intelligence, especially later on in the story (once some of the wool of innocence has been sheared from her eyes), and Dag had his moments. But I didn't like the world nearly enough to slog through the next book in the vague hope of learning more about it, given the likelihood of being drowned in more relationship drama. Given my high hopes for this story, I'm especially disappointed in how it played out.

 

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Penric's Demon

The World of the Five Gods universe: The Penric & Desdemona series, Book 1

Spectrum Literary Agency
Fiction, Fantasy
Themes: Bonded Companions, Demons, Religious Themes, Magic Workers
***+

Description

In a world of many kingdoms and five gods, the young Lord Penric rides to an arranged marriage with something less than his full enthusiasm. It's not that he hates the girl to which she's matched, daughter of a wealthy cheese merchant. It's just that he'd hoped for more from his life: more learning, more travel, more adventure. But the household coffers are too empty to indulge such dreams, so off he rides... until he chances upon a dying old woman and her distraught companions. Not just a woman - a sorceress, possessed of an old and powerful demon... one that chooses Penric, of all people, as its new host after her passing! Saddled with a capricious spirit he does not want and powers he cannot control, Penric - his betrothal naturally nullified, his family mortified - is swept off to distant Martensbridge, where disciples of the Bastard god (lord of chaos and demons) will decide the fate of both man and demon... assuming either survive a city of lies and treachery.

Review

I suppose it's just me. I keep hearing wonderful, glowing praise of Bujold and her works. I keep wanting to see that. But this is the second swing and miss, and I'm starting to suspect she just isn't an author I'm ever going to click with.
The world itself, though part of her larger Five Gods milieu, is supposed to be the start of a stand-alone series, yet I kept feeling that I was two steps behind, especially when the story and characters keep pausing to cram in history and worldbuilding details, as if to make sure I understood that this little adventure was just one corner of a Vast and Wide World with Deep History and Intricate Theology and Other Fantastic Things. What I saw felt... generic, I suppose. The average pseudo-medieval European fantasy world, with lords and priests and mages and traders and horses and castles and all the usual trappings. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it all felt a bit been-there, done-that, especially with so many recent works drawing on other places and cultures for their influences. The characters... again, there was nothing inherently wrong with them, and they served the story decently, but I never felt any real spark of connection or particular interest. Penric's a naïve bumbler plunged in way over his head with a demon as old and powerful and prone to minor trickery as Desdemona (yet who inexplicably sits back and lets Penric bumble them both into serious trouble), and other characters are generally flat, their schemes obvious, the problems and solutions too conveniently plot-shaped to really evoke much sense of peril. The ending, naturally, sets up the next stage of adventure for the wayward lord and clever demon, and left me still feeling like I was waiting for... something. A moment of true immersion. A flash of connection. A hook to drag me in and make me fumble the Kindle in my haste to download the second installment, or the first book of the Five Gods realm, or... just something. But it was never there.
This isn't a bad story, by any means. It hits its marks, and things happen, and it establishes a decent enough setting. I was just hoping to finally see the wonderful, brilliant things I keep hearing about this author. Once more, I must conclude that it is, indeed, just me who can't see them.

 

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