Sharing Knife: Horizon
Jan. 30th, 2009 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nishatalithaI have Bujold's new book. *gloats* It's the fourth in her Sharing Knife series, and now that I've read Horizon I can see why she wanted to call the second duology The Wide Green World.
Currently on the second read through and really enjoying it. Horizon concludes the story in a way that Legacy didn't and couldn't. I'm satisfied by the ending and I want more stories - even as the world expands and Dag and Fawn's knowledge and experience expand, at the same time, you wind up, you wind in as they come more together. And the world is a wide green place and I want to know what happens to other people. I want to see Luthlia.
People on the Bujold mailing list have been comparing it to a Western, but I've read westerns - well, Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey mostly - enough to know the genre, anyway. The Sharing Knife books don't feel like a western novel to me. They feel more like what Hamilton Public Library classified as Saga. I never read much of the Saga section; I was always more interested in the romance, science-fiction and fantasy sections, but Jeanette Oke and the like were shelved in that section. Ongoing stories, about the same families of people, set in the same world. The ones I read tended to have some sort of morality tale in the background (or the foreground). A lot of them were Christian.
And while the Sharing Knife series are clearly fantasy, are clearly romance (well, Beguilement anyway), are clearly set in America - I don't think they're westerns. Certainly not westerns as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mashugenah would describe them!
One thing I've discovered as I've awaited each new book over the past few year is that the Sharing Knife books have grown on me. I adored Chalion from the very beginning and loved the universe. I wasn't so fond of Legacy (it would be my least favourite of the series), but the world has intrigued me more and more over the past few years, just as Miles-before-Memory has lost his appeal. I tried describing it totamarillow as that the Sharing Knife books are like a second-hand coat, brought with memories already embedded and something you shape anew for yourself, whereas the Five Gods books are like a made to measure coat; fits instantly and comfortably. I'm not sure the analogy holds up particularly well, but the gist of is that both stories fit me in different ways.
Currently on the second read through and really enjoying it. Horizon concludes the story in a way that Legacy didn't and couldn't. I'm satisfied by the ending and I want more stories - even as the world expands and Dag and Fawn's knowledge and experience expand, at the same time, you wind up, you wind in as they come more together. And the world is a wide green place and I want to know what happens to other people. I want to see Luthlia.
People on the Bujold mailing list have been comparing it to a Western, but I've read westerns - well, Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey mostly - enough to know the genre, anyway. The Sharing Knife books don't feel like a western novel to me. They feel more like what Hamilton Public Library classified as Saga. I never read much of the Saga section; I was always more interested in the romance, science-fiction and fantasy sections, but Jeanette Oke and the like were shelved in that section. Ongoing stories, about the same families of people, set in the same world. The ones I read tended to have some sort of morality tale in the background (or the foreground). A lot of them were Christian.
And while the Sharing Knife series are clearly fantasy, are clearly romance (well, Beguilement anyway), are clearly set in America - I don't think they're westerns. Certainly not westerns as
mashugenah would describe them! One thing I've discovered as I've awaited each new book over the past few year is that the Sharing Knife books have grown on me. I adored Chalion from the very beginning and loved the universe. I wasn't so fond of Legacy (it would be my least favourite of the series), but the world has intrigued me more and more over the past few years, just as Miles-before-Memory has lost his appeal. I tried describing it to
tamarillow as that the Sharing Knife books are like a second-hand coat, brought with memories already embedded and something you shape anew for yourself, whereas the Five Gods books are like a made to measure coat; fits instantly and comfortably. I'm not sure the analogy holds up particularly well, but the gist of is that both stories fit me in different ways.