Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my very favorite writers, and I picked this up at the library to read in little bits before bed, kind of the literary equivalent of comfort food. I don’t actually love this series the way I love her other books, which is why I borrowed this instead of buying. Some of her strengths are still evident: she creates characters you want to know in real life, who are just so engaging and interesting that you can’t wait to spend more time with them every time you open the book, and their lives and problems and struggles become almost as important to you as they are to them. This book is somewhat more romance-y than her other books (although there is often a good dose of romance in her novels, and she does romance really well) and I like some romance in my reading, but in this series it seemed to take over and make the plot somewhat less compelling as a result. One thing that struck me as interesting: the POV switches between two main characters, and it was sometimes hard to tell which POV we were in until there was some obvious piece of narrative saying “Dag thought” or whatever. This is interesting because LMB is such a strong writer, and I guess I expected to be able to tell more easily whose voice we were in, just by the flavor of the language, or something. I’m curious to see if this was an issue in some of her other books that I just never noticed before, or if it’s one more reason this series doesn’t quite wow me the way her others do. ( )

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. ( )