Sharing Knife: Passage Post
May. 14th, 2008 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseTechnically, I finished the Sharing Knife: Passage (Lois McMaster Bujold) on May 2nd, so it should go in the May log, but it was remarkably not-obnoxious so I want to give it a shoutout.
Plot: newlyweds Dag and Fawn Bluefield embark on a flatbed trip to the ocean, gathering people along the way: Fawn's younger brother, a sympathetic flatbed captain, the captain's uncle and nephew, and one, then two, young Lakewalkers on the outs with their camp. Narrative as great American river trip: Dag explores his ground-manipulation skills, and the flatbed captain asks at every single stop what became of her missing father, brother and fiancee.
By the end of the novel, there's been at least one reflection that Community Might Be Good. Fawn, you are not smart as a whip, or if you are it's overwhelmed by your naievete. (My big bugaboo in the series is Fawn and Dag's lack of community. Passage starts alleviating that.)
Key quotes and reactions:
"Dag hasn't beguiled me one bit. He and Remo have been working on that, how beguilement really happens in groundwork, and have found out some pretty terrific things. You should get Dag to teach you." (p270 HC) Fawn, baby girl, you sound like an escapee from Medeous' freshman dorm.
Remo looked a bit taken aback to be reminded that people besides himself could have serious troubles, and he squinted as if seeing Berry for the first time. Fawn imagined the view through the haze of his own misery was still a bit blurry. (p169 HC) Bujold is writing in a different register, but the skill's still there.
Dag's experiments with ground-ripping remind me of nothing so much as a teeneger looking for his alcohol tolerance. "Am I drunk yet? Am I drunk yet? 'm I duh-drunk ye'? Ohhhhh, don' feel so good..."
I find myself very curious about what events would look like from Berry's point of view.
I'm not sure if Crane should be considered Dag's foil or object-lession. Discuss? Also for discussion: LMB's Eos blog post on series structure; is it the romance or the structure change that's frustrating readers?
Plot: newlyweds Dag and Fawn Bluefield embark on a flatbed trip to the ocean, gathering people along the way: Fawn's younger brother, a sympathetic flatbed captain, the captain's uncle and nephew, and one, then two, young Lakewalkers on the outs with their camp. Narrative as great American river trip: Dag explores his ground-manipulation skills, and the flatbed captain asks at every single stop what became of her missing father, brother and fiancee.
By the end of the novel, there's been at least one reflection that Community Might Be Good. Fawn, you are not smart as a whip, or if you are it's overwhelmed by your naievete. (My big bugaboo in the series is Fawn and Dag's lack of community. Passage starts alleviating that.)
Key quotes and reactions:
"Dag hasn't beguiled me one bit. He and Remo have been working on that, how beguilement really happens in groundwork, and have found out some pretty terrific things. You should get Dag to teach you." (p270 HC) Fawn, baby girl, you sound like an escapee from Medeous' freshman dorm.
Remo looked a bit taken aback to be reminded that people besides himself could have serious troubles, and he squinted as if seeing Berry for the first time. Fawn imagined the view through the haze of his own misery was still a bit blurry. (p169 HC) Bujold is writing in a different register, but the skill's still there.
Dag's experiments with ground-ripping remind me of nothing so much as a teeneger looking for his alcohol tolerance. "Am I drunk yet? Am I drunk yet? 'm I duh-drunk ye'? Ohhhhh, don' feel so good..."
I find myself very curious about what events would look like from Berry's point of view.
I'm not sure if Crane should be considered Dag's foil or object-lession. Discuss? Also for discussion: LMB's Eos blog post on series structure; is it the romance or the structure change that's frustrating readers?
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Date: 2008-05-17 05:28 pm (UTC)Yes! Yes, this is why I dislike Dag and Fawn's romance! I think part of relationships is acknowledging differences, in addition to being in gooey love!
haven't understood, yet, what irritates you about Fawn
I feel that Fawn is presented by the author as smart, but within the narrative does not do smart things. This is less excellent writing than I'm used to from LMB. Does that clear things up at all?
It's been pointed out that I'm defining "smart" fairly narrowly here: I mean someone who can produce a chain of logic explaining how they came to a conclusion. Fawn may be more of an intuitive thinker than a logician. But her conclusions seem fairly obvious to me.
I'm not sure what you mean by the missing sense of community . . . They seem to fit in with people on the move
Yes, so where are their pre-"on the move" friends? Who did Fawn shuck corn with during the last harvest? Where are Dag's "we've been on umpteen patrols" buddies? Granted, they're both presented as being a little off the norm and a bit isolated, but there's some context missing. Does that make sense?
Re: assuming lordship: I think you're onto something there.