Status
Call number
Genres
Collections
Publication
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Romance. HTML: "A thoughtful and skillful author." �??Cleveland Plain Dealer One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold has won numerous accolades and awards, including the Nebula and Locus Awards as well as the fantasy and science fiction genre's most prestigious honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, four times (most recently for Paladin of Souls). With The Sharing Knife series, Bujold creates a brand new world fraught with peril, and spins an extraordinary romance between a young farm girl and the brave sorcerer-soldier entrusted with the defense of the land against a plague of vicious malevolent beings. In Passage, volume three in Bujold's breathtaking saga of love, loyalty, and courage in the face of bigotry and dark magic, the devoted wedded lovers Fawn Bluefield and Dag Redwing Hickory are joined by new companions in their quest to find peace, acceptance, and a place in a most dangerous world.… (more)
User reviews
It's not quite the Montagues and Capulets, but newlyweds Fawn the farmer and Dag the Dunadan oops, I
In the main action here, our protagonists journey downriver with a motley crew of unhappy youngsters gathered along the way. The boat captain is in search of her lost father and betrothed. There's a nice rhythm of pranks, pie baking and peace, interspersed with some serious bandit fighting action. And it all ends with a day at the sea. Next volume: Horizon. I'll read it.
This was a great read and I still love the main characters, but in this book Dag definitely steals the show while I felt Fawn's role diminished somehow. I swear, throughout the entire thing all she seems to do is cook and shop for food. Boring! On the other hand, Dag gets to do all this cool stuff, like play mentor to a couple of young Lakewalkers, experiment with magic (groundwork), and discover he has crazy healing skills.
I also realized something with this book -- Bujold needs to come up with more ways to describe her characters' actions and behaviors! There just seemed to be an awful lot of "head tossing", "lip twitching" or "body curling" going on. By the time I got to about the fifty-seventh time someone tossed their head or twitched their lips, I was about to tear my hair out and scream.
This is the third in the
Except “Boss Berry” kinda sounds like a video game boss, and I kept trying to imagine what a giant evil berry would look like. A strawberry that shoots seeds at you?
Anyway, this wasn’t a can’t-put-down book, but more of a leisurely read (though I still read it in one day).
Even though Passage is fantasy, I imagine that the account of pre-industrial river life to be fairly accurate - it was certainly
It's also great that Bujold chose to bring back a minor character from an earlier book, Fawn's youngest brother, and make him into a fully-formed character. In the previous book, he didn't seem to have a lot of redeeming qualities, but that was seen though the eye of a younger (much-teased) sister; here, he's quite a valuable member of the team.
The main conflict of this book was a little slow to get going, but to me it seemed to mesh with the leisurely life of the river being depicted. And it was certainly exciting once it got going.
I'm really looking forward to the fourth and final book.
I really love this world and Bujold's characters. But then when haven't I? I see hints in this series that this might be science fiction as much as fantasy, that this was once our world and the magic might have scientific explanations. The world feels not like a faux medieval Europe, as in so much high fantasy (including Bujold's Chalion) but rather a frontier North America. And Bujold writes strong secondary characters, so her riverboat allows for an interesting mix. Certainly if you liked the prior two books, you shouldn't find this one disappointing. (And if you haven't read the prior books, I guarantee you will be disappointed. See, above. This isn't a book to be read on its own.)
This world is really interesting, and in this book the focus is a little less on Fawn and Dag (WHY does he have to be named that?) and their Forever Love, and more on other aspects of how their two
Plus, the old classic float-down-the-big-river-and-stuff-happens plotline (really it's just a variation on "Road Trip", which is probably the oldest plotline in literature) is an old classic for a reason.
Dag and Fawn, along with Fawn's brother Whit, begin to explore by retracing Fawn's journey to Glasshaven. From there, they find their way to the river. Dag has some idea of showing Fawn the sea as part of a belated honeymoon trip.
There they meet with Boss Berry who is taking her flatboat down the river in the hope of discovering what happened to her father, brother and fiance who went down the river to sell a boat and didn't return. Fawn signs on as cook and Dag and Whit to do general labor.
As they go down the river, they gather problems and people from beguiled Hod, to runaway patrollers Remo and Barr. Along the way they meet Farmers and rivermen and Dag tries out sharing Lakewalker secrets to begin to erase the rear and suspicion between Farmers and Lakewalkers.
The trip takes a turn for the dangerous when they run into river bandits controlled by a renegade Lakewalker. Berry learns the fate of her loved ones and Lakewalkers and Farmers work together to end the threat.
The worldbuilding is very realistic. Bujold mentions the accounts of the real keelboaters and others who traveled the upper Mississippi that she read for background. The characters are well-drawn and all grow and change through the book. I am eager to read HORIZON to get to the end of this epic journey.
Review: While I've thoroughly fallen in love with both Fawn and Dag, and don't mind any excuse to read more about them, this book didn't quite live up to the earlier books in the series. I think it was because it lacked a single overarching plot and was more episodic in nature - hence my somewhat disjointed attempt at a summary, above. Each episode was certainly interesting, and added to the big picture of the series as a whole, but one didn't always flow smoothly into the next, and the lack of a single motivating story line meant that the whole book felt like "Dag and Fawn float downriver, doin' stuff along the way."
But, like I said, at least it was interesting stuff. There are a couple of new turns in the story, and in the character development, that I wasn't expecting but which open up a lot of new possibilities. Bujold also spends a lot of time worldbuilding, as Dag figures out more about how Lakewalker magic really works, and y'all know how much I love a complex and internally consistent magical system. There are several new characters added to the mix in this volume, and I liked most of them almost as much as I like Fawn and Dag - Fawn's brother Whit, in particular, grew on me, as did the young Lakewalker Remo. I also thought that the riverboating aspect of this book was a cool (and very well-detailed) addition to the mix - it's not something you see often as a setting for fantasy novels, and it gave the book a unique flair. And, really, let's be honest: Bujold's got me well and hooked into these characters and this story, so I'll happily read about them doin' stuff for at least another book's worth. 4 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: This one doesn't even come close to standing alone; all of its cool worldbuilding is building on top of what's come before without much recapitulation. But the series as a whole should definitely be of interest to anyone who likes well-developed non-traditional fantasy worlds, and doesn't mind a little romance (really not much at all, at least in this volume) stirred into the mix.
The frame story of Passage is Fawn and Dag
Now as I was reading the book I contemplated that this book was just like a trip on a slow boat floating down a slow river. Mosly it's calm, occasionally there are rougher parts, but mostly you can sit back, relax and enjoy the scenery as it floats by.
This series reminds me of the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series from many moons ago in its trajectory. It's got vastly better written characters and plot, but I still think it will appeal to the same fans along with everyone who think Bujold is the mutt's nuts.
A personal note: it seems to me that female authors write about male "heroes" as they would like them to be, which may be why they do so much of it. A female "hero" may be too susceptible to self-projection.
Fawn and Dag have left behind their respective communities and seek passage on a flatboat heading down the Grace River.
I think this story’s strength is in how it is about journeys, family and community, and in the steady way it develops its themes. There’s the physical journey downriver, but the characters all have their own personal journeys: their boat-boss, Berry, is searching for her father and her betrothed; Fawn and her brother Whit have a chance to build a different relationship, away from their roles they occupied on their family’s farm; Dag is eager to take advantage of the opportunities to teach farmers about Lakewalkers, but doesn’t expect to wind up teaching Lakewalkers; nor to make such dramatic discoveries about his own, still-developing abilities and about what happens when Lakewalkers are cut off from others Lakewalkers.
“My papa used” -- Berry’s breath caught, broke free again -- “used to say, Nothing worth doing is fun all the time. But it’s still worth doing all the time.”