The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
Okay, Bujold is wonderful and all. Loved her writing style, and the way she changes it to fit the characters, and her humor, and her worldbuilding, and all the other things she does so well... but this book drove me up the wall. Partially because of the half-of-one-book thing (and the resulting lack of folded-up deft plot), but everyone else is annoyed about that too... The other main reason is Fawn.
A large part of the mystery of this book-- at least, the mystery that is actually resolved-- is why Fawn is so emotionally messed up. Dag is always seeing that her grounds are dark, she has bad feelings about her family, she's made some bad choices about guys clearly partially as a reaction to her family-- and why? What dark secrets? Well, we find out eventually. Her brothers make fun of her and her parents don't understand her and treat her like she's a toddler.
Okay, the first thing that totally annoys me is-- let's think about this. Courageous, bright woman, grows up with brothers who hammer her self-esteem into the ground, perhaps partially as a result of this makes a bad decision regarding the opposite sex, which even further hammers her self-esteem... who am I describing here? Ekaterin. (And maybe Bujold, given how much this seems to crop up in her work-- has an older brother ever not been at least somewhat stifling to his little sister?-- but whatever.) I can't help but feeling that Bujold is trying to tell Ekaterin's story again, only not as well, which deeply annoys me. Ekaterin is a wonderful character for several reasons-- because her experiences really are terrible, but not in a way she can readily articulate in a Barrayan society; because these terrible experiences hone her personality, badly perhaps in the short run but making her stronger and more mature in the long run; because of the awful, soul-deadening conflict of honor she has to face.
Fawn doesn't have any of that. Her family experiences are not nearly as awful as Ekaterin's (I will grant that her homicidal brothers are pretty bad, but really, they're more stupid than anything else), she doesn't seem any more mature for having gone through them, and she has no conflict. If she had had a conflict about running away-- but she doesn't. She just does it, and in what strikes me as a rather immature way (I mean, leaving no note?!)
Ekaterin, in addition, is a thoughtful and mature person, and she's thought a lot about these issues. She has a great speech in ACC where she talks about exactly what you have to do to get yourself free of this net-- you have to learn how to walk away, learn somehow how to create a space so that it doesn't bother you, or that you can let it go, anyway. And financial dependence, and other sorts of dependence (e.g. Nikki) make it harder to do so, and sometimes you just have to wait until you can get free of at least some of the dependencies (e.g., Kareen, who though she's emotionally in the middle of things still manages to make some rational, thoughtful, and mature decisions). And in fact sometimes things are important enough (again, e.g. Nikki) that you have to pull strings, if they are available, to make things happen. Fawn has neither thought about any of this or lived any of this. She just reacts. Mind you, she's slightly better about it at the end of the book than the beginning, but still, not even approaching Ekaterin, or Kareen.
Secondly, I don't mean to trivialize Fawn's complaints, but I can't help being a little impatient with her, mostly because Fawn reminds me very much of my twenty-year-old self. (This, by the way, is very much not a compliment to Fawn. Quite apart from the fact that I was probably one of the less mature twenty-year-olds I knew, I would expect someone in a "farmer" society to be way more mature than someone in a high-tech society.) Although I had no brothers to bring down my self-esteem, my parents certainly did not understand me or my sister very well, and to this day they'll obliviously say things that are rather emotionally hurtful or self-esteem-draining (rather more so than the fairly tame missiles her family hurled at her, actually-- the whole time I was like, "your dad calls you stupid, for in fact what is a kind of good reason, and your brothers call you ugly, and your family calls you a liar when you come out with some totally weird story about a creature they think is mythical, and that's it?!") to us, and it's really not clear that they think we can actually function in society as actual adults. And yes, when I was twenty I could not wait to get free of my parents, and I felt very conflicted about the whole thing, and didn't really like my parents all that much, and probably had large dark spaces running through my grounds, and sometimes did think about running away, and who would miss me if I died suddenly.
...But you know what? I got over it. (And so, I might add, did Ekaterin. I mean, she thinks wistfully about how nice a different childhood would have been, etc., and it clearly has negatively influenced her personality in many ways, but it's not this burning thing to her. Of course, there are far more burning problems Ekaterin has, but anyway.) It's the way my parents are, and I love them, and they love me, and that part of what they seem to love about me is a three-year-old that I no longer am is actually just kind of irrelevant. And the fact that they have flaws is just life-- it's not like I'm Miss Perfect myself-- and is more than outweighed by the trouble and love they had to go through to raise me. And I suppose that in ten years Fawn would feel that same way. (Though to be fair to Fawn, Kareen, Ekaterin, and I all had college to widen our horizons and help us come to these conclusions, which is an outlet Fawn really doesn't have.)
So the Dag-Fawn age thing, which annoys me in any case (it's just one of my pet peeves that in the Bujold universe the old/ugly guy almost always gets the young/nubile/beautiful girl, as if you can't be a heroine without being pretty), really annoys me here. In Curse of Chalion I was mildly annoyed, but it was okay because Beatriz at least seemed fairly mature. Fawn just strikes me as really, really young (despite her five minutes of physical courage with the malice... which is nothing like Beatriz' long-term, mentally-courageous support of Iselle and facing of some pretty bad possible fates over weeks and months), and I'm ten years older than she is, not forty. I'm just saying.
Also, I had (even more) issues with the romance, but I thought that might necessitate its own post, which is here.
A large part of the mystery of this book-- at least, the mystery that is actually resolved-- is why Fawn is so emotionally messed up. Dag is always seeing that her grounds are dark, she has bad feelings about her family, she's made some bad choices about guys clearly partially as a reaction to her family-- and why? What dark secrets? Well, we find out eventually. Her brothers make fun of her and her parents don't understand her and treat her like she's a toddler.
Okay, the first thing that totally annoys me is-- let's think about this. Courageous, bright woman, grows up with brothers who hammer her self-esteem into the ground, perhaps partially as a result of this makes a bad decision regarding the opposite sex, which even further hammers her self-esteem... who am I describing here? Ekaterin. (And maybe Bujold, given how much this seems to crop up in her work-- has an older brother ever not been at least somewhat stifling to his little sister?-- but whatever.) I can't help but feeling that Bujold is trying to tell Ekaterin's story again, only not as well, which deeply annoys me. Ekaterin is a wonderful character for several reasons-- because her experiences really are terrible, but not in a way she can readily articulate in a Barrayan society; because these terrible experiences hone her personality, badly perhaps in the short run but making her stronger and more mature in the long run; because of the awful, soul-deadening conflict of honor she has to face.
Fawn doesn't have any of that. Her family experiences are not nearly as awful as Ekaterin's (I will grant that her homicidal brothers are pretty bad, but really, they're more stupid than anything else), she doesn't seem any more mature for having gone through them, and she has no conflict. If she had had a conflict about running away-- but she doesn't. She just does it, and in what strikes me as a rather immature way (I mean, leaving no note?!)
Ekaterin, in addition, is a thoughtful and mature person, and she's thought a lot about these issues. She has a great speech in ACC where she talks about exactly what you have to do to get yourself free of this net-- you have to learn how to walk away, learn somehow how to create a space so that it doesn't bother you, or that you can let it go, anyway. And financial dependence, and other sorts of dependence (e.g. Nikki) make it harder to do so, and sometimes you just have to wait until you can get free of at least some of the dependencies (e.g., Kareen, who though she's emotionally in the middle of things still manages to make some rational, thoughtful, and mature decisions). And in fact sometimes things are important enough (again, e.g. Nikki) that you have to pull strings, if they are available, to make things happen. Fawn has neither thought about any of this or lived any of this. She just reacts. Mind you, she's slightly better about it at the end of the book than the beginning, but still, not even approaching Ekaterin, or Kareen.
Secondly, I don't mean to trivialize Fawn's complaints, but I can't help being a little impatient with her, mostly because Fawn reminds me very much of my twenty-year-old self. (This, by the way, is very much not a compliment to Fawn. Quite apart from the fact that I was probably one of the less mature twenty-year-olds I knew, I would expect someone in a "farmer" society to be way more mature than someone in a high-tech society.) Although I had no brothers to bring down my self-esteem, my parents certainly did not understand me or my sister very well, and to this day they'll obliviously say things that are rather emotionally hurtful or self-esteem-draining (rather more so than the fairly tame missiles her family hurled at her, actually-- the whole time I was like, "your dad calls you stupid, for in fact what is a kind of good reason, and your brothers call you ugly, and your family calls you a liar when you come out with some totally weird story about a creature they think is mythical, and that's it?!") to us, and it's really not clear that they think we can actually function in society as actual adults. And yes, when I was twenty I could not wait to get free of my parents, and I felt very conflicted about the whole thing, and didn't really like my parents all that much, and probably had large dark spaces running through my grounds, and sometimes did think about running away, and who would miss me if I died suddenly.
...But you know what? I got over it. (And so, I might add, did Ekaterin. I mean, she thinks wistfully about how nice a different childhood would have been, etc., and it clearly has negatively influenced her personality in many ways, but it's not this burning thing to her. Of course, there are far more burning problems Ekaterin has, but anyway.) It's the way my parents are, and I love them, and they love me, and that part of what they seem to love about me is a three-year-old that I no longer am is actually just kind of irrelevant. And the fact that they have flaws is just life-- it's not like I'm Miss Perfect myself-- and is more than outweighed by the trouble and love they had to go through to raise me. And I suppose that in ten years Fawn would feel that same way. (Though to be fair to Fawn, Kareen, Ekaterin, and I all had college to widen our horizons and help us come to these conclusions, which is an outlet Fawn really doesn't have.)
So the Dag-Fawn age thing, which annoys me in any case (it's just one of my pet peeves that in the Bujold universe the old/ugly guy almost always gets the young/nubile/beautiful girl, as if you can't be a heroine without being pretty), really annoys me here. In Curse of Chalion I was mildly annoyed, but it was okay because Beatriz at least seemed fairly mature. Fawn just strikes me as really, really young (despite her five minutes of physical courage with the malice... which is nothing like Beatriz' long-term, mentally-courageous support of Iselle and facing of some pretty bad possible fates over weeks and months), and I'm ten years older than she is, not forty. I'm just saying.
Also, I had (even more) issues with the romance, but I thought that might necessitate its own post, which is here.