Books: The Sharing Knife

The Sharing Knife
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Copyright 2006
361 pages

This is a good fantasy! I am very pleased to have found another fantasy author.

Fawn has run away from home because she is pregnant. Along the way she sees a band of Lakewalkers. These are magic folks who protect the farmers from a Malice, which is a creature that rises from the ground and takes animals and people and turns them into zombie-like creatures.

Dag is patroller among the Lakewalkers. He saves Fawn from a mud-man (a creature made by the Malice) and together they kill the Malice.

But in so doing, Fawn loses her child. Her baby's essence is now trapped in a magical knife that belongs to Dag.

With this bond, the two eventually fall in love. Dag returns Fawn to her family. They are not bad people but they do not value Fawn very much.

In the end, Dag and Fawn end up together. The story continues in Book 2, which I suppose will deal with the essence trapped in the knife, since that was left unfinished in Book 1.

These books are very much like Tamaro Pierce's young adult works, except with subject matter that is more suited for older readers. Some violence but not too much. Very well-wrought characters, interesting magics.

I read this book in two nights. I really hated to put it down to go to bed!

I'm looking forward to Book 2.

5 stars