Legacy
The Sharing Knife Vol. 2

Lois McMaster Bujold

Fawn Bluefield and Dag Redwing Hickory are married despite her people's objections. In the end, the Farmer family gave a proper wedding feast for them. Now they have to return to his people and face the Lakewalkers. Lakewalkers detest Farmers as much as Farmers detest Lakewalkers, if not more. Dag knows it won't be easy getting Fawn accepted. His own Redwing family may be the worst of the Lakewalkers when it comes to welcoming Fawn.

With a broken arm, Dag is hampered some. He is beginning to learn that his Lakewalker ground sense abilities are expanding in some other ways. Fawn helps him as he explores the extension of his abilities. They are happy as a couple, learning more about each other as newlyweds do.

The Lakewalker community is as unwelcoming to the new Bluefield couple as Dag feared. When his mother forbids him onto the Redwing property, he and Fawn put up their tent with some friends instead. His brother threatens to take them before the Lakewalker Council to legally break the marriage bonds.

When the news of a devestating Malice attack arrives from the north, Dag takes on the duties of the unit Captain that leaves to face it down. Fawn must stay behind in the Lakewalker camp. Fawn, although a bit shy, is smart and brave. She approaches her mother-in-law on her own, learning more of the older woman's bitterness towards her.

Lois McMaster Bujold has continued her wonderful Sharing Knife fantasy series with a second book as strong and satisfying as the first. Legacy has powerful characters, interesting magic, nasty monsters, daring heroes, and believable human emotions. The thread of bigotry is much stronger in this second book than the first, and it is the thread that keeps the books strong.

As well as good fantasy, The Sharing Knife series is good romance too. Fawn and Dag have much against them as a couple - their different cultures who mistrust each other, their ages, their lack of knowledge of each other's culture and how it has shaped them, and the knowledge of Dag's first wife who was killed in a Malice attack. Yet their own strength and love pull them together in a new relationship that others can't accept.

There's much that is predictable in the novel - the Lakewalkers are bound to be suspicious of Fawn when she arrives, Dag is bound to have to leave to work, the monster is bound to be vanquished, etc. But Bujold keeps enough twists and turns that the reader is startled at different events unfolding.

Legacy is full of daring-do, arguements, romance, the occasional battle, and the quiet scenes as well. It is a wonderful story about people.

Notice: Sexual situations

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