Thursday, December 26, 2013

Beguilement(The Sharing Knife, Book 1) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Finished on Dec17.

I read the first three of this series of four several years ago. Naturally, I didn't remember enough of the first three to tackle the fourth book without rereading the earlier ones.

The geography of this world sounds a lot like the eastern US, but it isn't totally obvious. The society composed of two groups: Lakewalkers and Farmers. Farmers resemble American rural and semi-rural society of the late 1800s more or less: pre-electricity, some indoor plumbing, wood fires for heat and cooking, horses for transportation. The Lakewalkers somewhat resemble the plains indians of more or less the same period, but are much more. They have some psi powers, specifically the ability to sense "ground" - a type of life-force present in all things, particularly living things. They are highly organized and have the mission of patrolling inhabited areas for incursions of menaces known by them as "malices" and by farmers as "blight bogles" which feed on "ground" and utterly destroy everything they can reach.

The two groups are completely separate. Farmers regard Lakewalkers with superstitious fear and Lakewalkers have deep contempt for farmers. They do, of necessity, interact, but very uneasily.

So, it is obvious where this is going. A farmer girl and a Lakewalker man meet and fall in love and thereby hangs the tale.

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