kurtzzz

Jo Walton had an interesting post on Tor.com a couple of weeks ago, about types of series, which helped crystallize some of my thoughts on why this series didn't quite work for me. It seems as though it's meant to be a series like The Lord of the Rings, which is essentially one book broken up into separate parts for publishing; in fact, if I recall correctly, the first two books of The Sharing Knife were presented as one book broken up. However, the overall feel of the series is more like what Walton calls "style two", in which there is an overarching story arc to the series, but each volume has its own story arc and closure. The problem I had is that each volume doesn't have quite enough story arc and closure; there's all too much journeying and too little action. My other major problem were the characters, especially Dag and Fawn, the two main characters. They're from two different cultures, and essentially the books are about how they first fall in love and become a couple, and then how they start to reconcile their separate cultures. But I found both of them too perfect to be truly interesting after the initial romance part: Dag is too noble, Fawn is too cleverly intuitive, always coming up with exactly the right suggestion. I felt as though they needed some balancing imperfections to make them more real (as Miles Vorkosigan feels real: brilliant, but with serious challenges). There's insufficient cost for the resolution to feel satisfying; nobody really loses much, and I never felt as though anyone was in real danger (again unlike the Vorkosigan books). What I did love was the worldbuilding, which is always one of Bujold's strengths. Here she gives us a frontier setting, like the American Wild West, where Dag's people are those who live with the land while Fawn's people are farmers. The magic is nature magic, the enemies (the malices) are like primeval, malevolent forces of nature. Interestingly, there are hints that the world itself developed from a more classically fantasy world, with kings and nobility. I don't want to be too negative here, because I did enjoy the books, or I wouldn't have read all four of them, and I really loved the world. I just don't think they're Bujold's best work, though I'd love to see her return to the world and do something else there.

2023-06-23 19:28