fairandfatalasfair

I feel like the Sharing Knife books suffer a bit from trying to be a romance and a fantasy adventure story at the same time and not really committing to either, and also from the lower plot complexity of a lot of Bujold’s later books, which makes them a slower and less gripping read in some respects. Add on the fact that the main couple of the romance has such a wide age gap, which I think a lot of people who would otheriwise like them are wigged out by, and I think the result is that they have a notably smaller following than her other big series.

Which is a shame, because the *worldbuilding* on these books is fucking fascinating. There is something *so* juicy about the Lakewalker’s communal inheritance of duty and sacrifice, the way that it’s both real and practical and deathly serious in some ways and sort of half-heartedly kept to out of allegiance to tradition in others. (The patrols are real but the tents are sort of… rules-lawyered). The anguish and tragedy of fighting a generations-long deadly war on behalf of a community that’s as likely to cut your throat as not if they catch you alone, and the way that tragedy comes out in isolationism and resentment and contempt and a thousand other very real, human little nastinesses. The way that sharing shapes the culture, the absolute contempt that the lakewalkers feel for a ‘wasted’ death, and the way that sacred sacrifice is twisted and warped in their neighbours’ understanding into necromancy and cannibalism precisely because it’s too sacred and secret and painful to explain properly.

I finished rereading Passage and just... I'm so hooked by the perspective. The baby Lakewalkers getting het up because the bandits murdered a Lakewalker without letting her share. (because dying young? that comes with the territory. But a wasted death is a tragedy.) Crane responding to the idea of suicide by derisively pointing out that he doesn't have a bonded knife. It's such a fascinating set of base assumptions about the world, I want to pick it apart with tweezers. I want to read a million first conversations of Lakewalkers trying to explain to Farmers why they're Like This about their suicide ritual.

It’s such a deep, rich, layered, real-feeling culture, and the way it clashes against the very different culture of their farmer neighbours feels so genuine and makes me want to dig my hands into it and play. But it feels like a harder series to sell people on than her other ones.