The Sharing Knife- Volume One: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fawn Bluefield is a gal in trouble- pregnant with the child of a neighbor boy, and rejected by him as well, she runs away from her family rather than tell them her troubles, because all of them treat her like an idiot anyway. She decides to run to the nearest large town, Glassforge, to find work and bear her child away from the judging eyes of her family.

But along the way, she encounters a Lakewalker, whose patrol is searching the area for something they call a malice, and what farmers like Fawn call a Blight Bogle. But Blight Bogles are almost unknown where Fawn has grown up, and regarded more as a fairy tale than anything else. So when she's kidnapped by bandits who are also mud-men- humans or animals twisted by the Malice into something that is not quite human or animal but something of both, she is rescued by Dag, who has been temporarily separated from the rest of his people.

They take shelter at a small farm abandoned by the owners who fled the Malice, and Fawn and Dag bond a bit before he tells her to stay put and goes off to see to the Malice. But the Malice has plans for Fawn, and kidnaps her again almost as soon as Dag is gone. Once again, Dag tracks her down and comes to her rescue, but when the device that serves him as one of his hands is shattered, she must be the one to strike the malice with a special knife that kills it instantly- after first using a similar knife that is the wrong one.

But the attack by the malice causes Fawn to lose her baby, and once more they take refuge on the farm and wait for her to heal and stop bleeding. While they are there, Dag explains to her what the knife was- a special knife created by his people known as a "Sharing Knife" and the only weapon capable of killing a malice. The knife is specially made to hold a death, the death of one of his people, which, when plunged into a Malice allows it to remember how to die, and it promptly does so.

Each knife is powered by the death of one of Dag's people, a Lakewalker. But the second knife he carried, the one Fawn mistakenly used first, is now empowered with a death and a spirit- that of Fawn's unborn child, stolen by the malice, and somehow drawn back into the unprimed Sharing Knife. This is a puzzle to Dag, since he's never heard of anything like this happening before, and because the spirit in the knife is Fawn's child, by his own people's laws, the knife may now belong to her- someone who will never have the chance to use it.

But Dag needs Fawn for a reason- she will need to testify as to what happened with the Malice at Dag's camp, and so, once she has healed up enough to travel, the two of them return to Glassforge so both can continue resting and healing. There, Dag shares what happened with his patrol leader, who tells him that he must take it up with the makers back at their camp, and she also warns him away from Fawn, who he finds himself incredibly attracted to for her curiousity, her free and open mind, and her innocent and delightful personality.

But he's worried about being so much older than her (over twenty years), and whether she feels anything for him beyond feeling as a daughter might towards a father or favorite uncle. But he needn't have worried, for Fawn has fallen for him as well. And despite Dag's Patrol leader and aunt warning him that only sorrow lies ahead for any match between a farmer and a Lakewalker, Fawn and Dag become lovers during their time in Glassforge.

But soon Dag must return to camp, and Fawn must come with him to testify as to what happened with the Malice, and to answer questions about the knife holding her child's spirit. Dag, who is used to growing up with a fairly scattered family, can't understand why Fawn would be so willing to leave the bosom of a loving family. But when they go back to her farm on the way back to the Lakewalker camp, he soon learns why: they treat her like a not-too-bright child, finding her intelligence suspect and her questions tedious and tiresome.

But returning home doesn't just get Fawn grief from her family, but also the father of her child, who does his best to paint her as a whore, and telling her he never would have married her because he is already promised to a girl from a farm next to that of his own family, and their marriage will increase the size of his land. Dag takes care of him quickly and makes an enemy in the boy, whose name is Sunny. But he also realizes quickly that he doesn't want to live without Fawn and asks her father if he can marry her.

Not everyone in her family is agreed, but Dag takes care of them when two of her own brothers attempt to beat him and run him off, making Fawn think that he abandoned her before her wedding day. And Dag discovers another talent he didn't think he had: when Fawn's brother destroys the glass bowl she bought her mother as a gift in Glassforge, Dag is somehow able to remake it, fixing it as good as new, which is a talent that only a maker should have.

But as Dag and Fawn marry, both deliriously happy, only one question remains for both of them: How will Dag's people take their love and marriage, when all are convinced that any kind of a relationship between a farmer and a Lakewalker is destined for sorrow, not joy?

I liked this book. I liked it a lot. Even though lots of potentially-confusing terms are bandied about, Ms. Bujold eases us into it, and the differences between Lakewalkers and Farmers by using the device of Dag explaining to Fawn all these terms and things she's never heard of before. Amd even though she's also explaining these things to us, the reader, the explanation doesn't come across like a heavy-handed info dump- it's handled with finesse and a light touch.

I loved the two characters, which are both strong, but in different ways. Each one is somewhat handicapped- Dag by his missing hand and part of an arm, and Fawn by her innocence and inability to protect herself physically, but each of their strengths reinforce each other's weaknesses, making them complement each other almost perfectly. They also share a real affection for each other that quickly becomes something more, but again, you never feel that the characters are only attracted to each other because the story requires it. This is as close to real as it gets.

And the characters don't stay static. Both must change and grow, sometimes in surprising ways, and then they must deal with the results of that growth. I also liked the way the two characters interacted even when they weren't falling in love, and also the world, with its Malices, Lakewalker magic, and even the Lakewalkers themselves. What I love most is that each society is presented differently, but neither one is perfect and accepting- both have members who act and think like idiots and/or bigots- and we're not expected to side with one or the other.

This is not only a wonderful fantasy, but also a wonderful romance, and the way the two stories subtly intertwined and made each other better was like music to my ears. This is the standard that all fantasy romances should aspire to, and I can't recommend it enough to any fan of fantasy- or good romances.