imageDBIn which I get to use the word “vitalist” and call another reviewer an ass!

This was my first book by renowned sci fi/fantasy author Bujold. Beguilement, published in 2006, is the first of the four volumes of the Sharing Knife series. I listened to this one on audio, and I highly recommend that format for anyone so inclined. I think romantic fantasy works really well on audio, and the female narrator was very good.

Fawn Bluefield is a young farm girl in the magical world Bujold has created, fantasy North American lake country, whose technology and economy are preindustrial. Fawn is unwed, and pregnant, heading to the city of Glassforge to escape the condemnation of her family and create a new life with her child. Fawn is so tiny she is mistaken for a child, and she’s very young — barely 18, with a naivete appropriate to her youth and rural farm existence. Fawn is captured on the road by mud-men, truly horrifying amalgams of men and beasts, and rescued by Dag, a middle aged Lakewalker with one hand. Lakewalkers are magical people (in this vitalist tale, Lakewalkers influence and sense the “ground” of living things — kind of like the Force for Star Wars fan) who patrol the area for Malices, creatures who hatch and feed on the grounds of living things, getting stronger with each kill. Malices create Mud Men out of animals, which they control as through one mind. Lakewalkers are able to kill Malices using Sharing Knives, knives made of the bones of Lakewalkers and primed with a mortal blow by a Lakewalker death (containing a Lakewalker death, they force Malices to remember how to die). There are hints that this world is post-apocalyptic, but it was never clear to me what life was like before magic got out of control.

SPOILER FOLLOWS

SPOILER AHEAD

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Fawn and Dag manage to kill the Malice, but Fawn’s unborn child is sacrificed in the process. When its ground goes into one of Dag’s knives, something Dag has never seen before, he decides they need to travel to Glassforge together to see his clan leader and get advice. Later, he takes her back to her farm.

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END SPOILER

IT;s SAFE NOW, REALLY!!

All of the fantasy adventure is replaced about 1/3 of the way in with worldbuilding around a love story. Dag and Fawn are years apart in age and experience, not to mention height (shades of Lisa Kleypas, for sure), and, what’s more, as a farmer and a Lakewalker, their relationship has a built in barrier. Farmers tend to be suspicious of Lakewalker magic, unaware of the extent to which it protects them (they refer to malices as “blight bogles”, but think of them more as imaginary creatures than the real threats they are) while Lakewalkers, who are a tent-dwelling cross between hunter-gatherers and pastoral people, tend to be dismissive of the craft and skill farmers possess.

I would call this a domestic fantasy, as the elements of the world Bujold has created are revealed more in conversation and in doing every day tasks than in heroic battles. Although Fawn and Dag do a lot of explaining to each other, it never feels like an info dump, perhaps because the rituals, beliefs, histories and practices of farmers and Lakewalkers are so interesting, or because the characters are so likable. (If I have a quibble, it’s how hard it was to understand how ignorant these two groups could be of one another while basically living on top of each other.)

Dag is world weary, referring frequently to himself as an “old patroller”, who has lost not only his hand, but his family, in the ongoing battles with the Malices. For readers looking for a middle aged hero who is complex and deeply romantic, Dag is your man. He’s often physically underestimated by his foes (thanks in part to his disability), and very intelligent in a Columbo kind of way.  He’s even tempered to a fault — and Fawn, being his perfect match, realizes quickly that there are a lot of strong emotions roiling beneath that calm exterior.

For her part, Fawn is spirited, emotional, and has a strong sense of right without being righteous. As a farmer, it’s very important to her to be productive, and she has to find unique ways to do that on the road with Dag. She’s more idealistic and hopeful than Dag, but she grows in the course of the book, too, becoming more thoughtful and more aware of the large forces that have shaped her life. She has been put down for most of her life by the people around her, and she needs Dag’s admiration and respect to see her own strengths and potential.

The romance between Dag and Fawn is absolutely beautiful, and if I were redoing my list of Top 9 Most Romantic Love scenes in Romance, I might just have to add the first sexual encounter between them.  I was frankly stunned when the true extent of their age difference was revealed in the second half of the book, but it totally worked for me.

It’s very interesting to me, in reading reviews of Beguilement on fantasy and sci fi websites, how dismissive they are of the fantasy elements in this book. You know how in philosophy, when women write about emotions and mothering and love, it’s not considered “hard core philosophy”? And in history, if you’re not talking about political, economic or military history, it’s not (or wasn’t until 25 years ago) considered “real history”? Well, I now know that in fantasy, if the magic and worldbuilding is not built around weapons and warfare and political intrigue, some fantasy readers do not call it “real fantasy”.

It is true that this is not a stand alone book for anyone interested in the mystery of Fawn’s use of the sharing knife, or certainly not for anyone interested in the ultimate battle between the Lakewalkers and Malices. But the romance itself, while ending in a definite HEA, still has a lot of ground to cover, and leaves many obstacles in their path, similar in that sense to the end of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, and dissimilar to Sharon Shinn’s Mystic and Rider, in which the central romance arc ends.

I wanted to highlight a review that shows just how hard it is to review across genres (or perhaps how easy it is to be an ass):

“The next sentence will probably cause about half of you to groan in dismay and click to another review fast enough to cause a quantum fluctuation in your computer’s processor. Beguilement is a straight-up romance novel. … Though Bujold gives this new world a history with excellent dramatic potential for a suspenseful story at least as rewarding as her Hugo-Nebula coup Paladin of Souls, the only conflict in Beguilement is “Will they or won’t they?” Since it’s obvious they will, what’s the hook here? … is there any other genre on earth whose formula can be best described as a dull postponement of the inevitable? Are they gonna end up together at the end? Do bears…? You know….” (SFReviews.net)

As you well know, dear reader, it’s not “will they or won’t they?” but “how will they?” that provides very satisfying dramatic conflict for romance readers. It’s one thing for an SF reviewer to say he prefers other kinds of conflicts, but to pronounce romantic conflict dull tout court just because he finds it so? Please.

Maybe Dag using his mind to repair a beloved shattered bowl in a farm house, or controlling the ground of fireflies to create a magical nighttime ambience for his lover, doesn’t count for some people as fantasy.

It sure does for me. I’m already halfway through book 2!

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