The Sharing Knife triology is not your typical Lois McMaster Bujold novel. While each world created by Bujold is unique, her novels can be read alone, which is not the case with the Sharing Knife. I'm 2/3 through the triology and find the characters interesting, but I'm more intrigued by the world she has created and hope that more comes to light as the story progresses. ( )

A great follow on from the original story and expands the world and characters. Another great fantasy story. Looking forward to part 3. ( )

Another great entry into the series, once again I'm glad it feels like it's own book, not just the path to a cliffhanger. The characters have really grown on me, and the world feels totally believable. I particularly enjoy the little bits of humor (usually ought of the characters' inner commentary) and the sense of deeper mystery. ( )

I'm not entirely sure why, but this book at once both rounds out the characters, and annoys me at the way specific characters end up being rounded out, because while we begin to see that what the two main protagonists feel for each other has become quite strong, there could (yet) be no happy ending in sight. Well, that's the gist I get from it anyway, and it left me feeling awfully depressed and unsatisfied.

The pivotal "saving the world" moment, I should call it... somehow it almost feels like Fawn doesn’t really do anything. True, the characters within the story also give her no credit whatsoever, but I mean I almost personally feel she shouldn’t receive credit, when she’s obviously done SOMETHING. So what is this “she doesn’t deserve it” mood from me? She is good at deduction, but that's something any character worth their brains could've figured out, including Hoharie and Dag before they made their risky attempts. Is there anything about her that makes her out of the ordinary? I'm finding her almost a bit of a letdown, because I wanted her to be more. Can her powers of deduction do MORE than that? Bigger mysteries to solve and all that.

I honestly expected there to be some kind of peaceful resolution in the first half of the book, but apparently there isn't. At one point I seriously thought Dag was going to choose patrolling over her, and I don't think I personally would have forgiven that, but Fawn could and did, which in turn disoriented and confused me. I understand saving the world is a big thing and all, but he couldn't have tried a bit harder to save what they had too? It was like he was walking around mostly in a daze not sure what to do; but why, if she's supposedly like a drink of water to a man thirsting to death? He couldn’t have fought harder against that council? I don't know. Maybe insight into it being for the greater good is beyond me. Whatever the word for THAT is. But I still feel like he barely tried hard enough.

I’m hearing now that Book 4 is to be the last, and I wonder how that will be accomplished with so many threads to tie together by then. Hopefully, it’ll work out. ( )

[Amy] I hated the first book in this series. I thought it was a cheesy romance with the speculative elements spackled on ineptly, and the romance itself done badly. I really couldn't find much by way of redeeming qualities for it, to be perfectly honest. So, as you might imagine, I was not what one might call eager to chase the rest of the series as it was released, no matter how much I might generally adore Bujold's writing.

Well, years passed, and word of mouth trickled, and I read the text of a speech from the author herself about genre that said some intriguing things about the series, and I saw people whose opinions I have reason to believe at least well-considered saying glowing things about the third and fourth volumes. With one thing and another, when I found a bargain copy of book two, well, I went ahead and picked it up.

Verdict: It didn't suck. I don't love it with the deep passion I have for the Vorkosigan books, but it's far and away better than (my memory of) the first one, and has quite a leg up on the later Chalion books, too. Perhaps the brain-eater, it has not come to Bujold quite yet.

What, you want more details? Right, OK. It remains a book standing firmly astride the boundary of fantasy and romance, but not in the same way as the myriad "paranormal romances" which litter the gutters of said boundary. (I'm sure there are some good books lurking in that particular morass, but I'm equally sure they're sufficiently outnumbered that I feel safe painting with such a broad brush, as it were.)

The speculative elements are growing a bit more depth, and so far seem to be passing the internal-consistency test, so that's good. We're seeing them almost entirely from the viewpoint of someone to whom they are far more mysterious than they would be to a veteran of genre, which I suspect might be for the benefit of any readers who wandered in from the romance side of the street. Given that, I'm rather more willing to be patient with the spoonfeeding than I was when I read the first one, as at that point I didn't realize she was actually targeting readers of both genres.

As for the romantic aspects, those are handled more believably here as well, but as I am decidedly a resident of the speculative side, I don't have any extensive commentary on it, other than to say that damn, can we say "star-crossed lovers"? I knew you could!

Anyway. I'll be reading the third one ere long, I think, which is the point at which the author says the romance readers stop liking the series so much, and the speculative readers start. We'll see!
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