It’s just that this particular book had all the standard elements. Religion, freaked out family, kinda-sorta-accepting family, high school drama club complete with theatre production, car crash, dog, non-explicit sex, formal/prom. Even now I’m having trouble not confusing it with ‘that one where it’s the school newspaper and one of them is a photographer’, which is um.. The Year They Banned the Books by Nancy Garden.

I suppose it’s a little unfair of me to say it’s just like all the other books, when it’s from 1997 and set in New Zealand. To some extent, the other books are like it.

The New Zealand setting didn’t affect things much. Just some of the terms were different, and my edition had a handy glossary in the front. Not everything was in there, but I was pleased to see “goolies” made the cut. No censorship in the glossary.

I notice on Amazon that Kirkus is quoted as saying “[a] steamy, brilliant girl-on-girl romance”. Either they’re operating from a different definition of “steamy” than I am, they’re counting the hot tub scene as full of steam, or my edition really was edited!

I like the size of the book. Smallish and thin both, with a photo depiction of each of the girls on one side.

The book was readable, but I was rolling my eyes a few times. It got heavily teen angsty in one or two spots. Or was it three or four?

And early on there’s this scene where the girls are working in a fast food place and the guy in charge is sexually harassing like every girl who works for him. And though most of them don’t like it, no one does anything productive about it! Like, tell, ANYONE. Like, threaten him with a LAWSUIT. Like, QUIT! So the book has left a skeevy vibe behind all because of this one guy who isn’t even terribly relevant to the rest of the plot.

The priest’s reaction is refreshing, but I have to say not terribly convincing and believable to me. Fast food guy can sexually harass his employees without consequences, but Catholic priest can say whatever he likes about homosexuality?

At least.. I assumed he was Catholic. Or remembered him as Catholic. Is that the only Christian religion where they’re called priests and they’re celibate? Well, anyway… don’t tell the Pope what he’s been saying in 1997.

So, in sum, enough is enough. Next angsty gay teen romance I read had better at least have some zombies in it. And I hate zombies.

Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings, one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: when the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?

Review:
If I didnâ€t like Dag and Fawn, The Sharing Knife: Horizon would be one of the most boring books Iâ€ve ever read.

Having reached the end of their river voyage, Dag and Fawn pause long enough to witness the marriage of Whit and Berry before parting ways with Fawnâ€s brother and his new bride and heading to New Moon Cutoff, a Lakewalker camp where a renowned medicine maker, Arkady Waterbirch, lives. There, Dag finds an explanation for some of his abilities that is far more positive than the dark alternatives heâ€d been fearing and apprentices with the fastidious Arkady for several months.

Arkady is opposed to Dag practicing medicine on “farmers,” but when a child stricken with lockjaw needs his help, Dag goes willingly, knowing that he might be sacrificing the incredibly valuable apprenticeship as a result. The boy survives, but Dagâ€s actions throw New Moon camp into a tizzy so he decides to head back up north with newly pregnant Fawn rather than succumb to the restrictions the camp leader wants to oppose on him. A little way down the road, heâ€s joined by Arkady, staging his own protest against the leaderâ€s decision.

Along the way they acquire various traveling companions—farmers and Lakewalkers both—until their party numbers more than two dozen. Dag fashions a trio of necklaces designed to help veil farmers†grounds and protect them against malices. These are put to the test right at the end of the book when the party stumbles upon a particularly awful malice and Fawn (with help from Whit and Berry) proves again how resourceful and useful farmers can be if allowed to help. The implication is that the tale of this deed will spread far and wide and help foster a sense of cooperation between the two peoples.

Most of the book focuses on what Dag is learning and, true, it can be kind of interesting sometimes. Bujold has created an admirably consistent world for her characters to inhabit, so all of the detail about the healing techniques Dag is learning pretty much makes sense. Itâ€s just that the narrative moves so slowly. I never do particularly well with a story whose whole plot is, “And then they walked a lot,” and thatâ€s essentially what this book becomes in its second half.

Also, thereâ€s too many characters at the end. Some of the new ones are interesting—Iâ€m fond of Dagâ€s patroller niece, Sumac, and I can see why the half-Lakewalker siblings Calla and Indigo are important as a preview of what Dag and Fawnâ€s own children might be like—but many are nondescript. Itâ€s easy to forget some of them are even there; I certainly did so more than once.

Ultimately, I did enjoy The Sharing Knife series and, though itâ€s easy to fault it for being too long and rambly, I donâ€t have any particular recommendations for how it could be made shorter.

So the hardest thing in reading this was I didn’t know where the original left off and the zombies began. It was easy to tell that anything relating to the zombies was new. All references in martial arts, new. Silly little changes like Crypts and Coffins (the original game I can’t immediately name) and Kiss Me Deer (that one I can name, but don’t know how to play), obviously new.

The characters, essentially the same as the original, I’m sure. The general plot, I’m sure the same. When Elizabeth goes from place to place to place, I’m pretty sure she did so in the original. When people get married, again, reasonably sure that was the same.

But other things, when the two ideas seem to intersect, or seem a little unreal, I’m not sure. Are the stupid innuendo jokes about balls in the original? How much puking was Elizabeth’s mom doing? Did Darcy seriously cripple that guy? Wickham, was it? I find it rather unlikely he was traveling around on a bed in the original, but.. how do I know?

And still other things, I know they were new, but I wonder what they were replacing in the original. In specific, Charlotte (was it?) gets stricken with the zombie disease and gets herself quickly married to some guy, Collins? Lots of C names. Very annoying. And then she continues to partake of society while she slowly turns into a zombie. And he doesn’t seem to notice. No one seems to notice except Elizabeth. And then the C guy commits suicide.

So in the original, was she pregnant before she got married? Did she die in childbirth? Did he then kill himself?

Is any of that guessing correct? No idea.

As you can tell, I had a real problem with names. People had first names, and they had surnames, and there were several Miss Bennetts, of course. Which I may not have even just spelled correctly. But then they might also be called ‘the Longbourne ladies’ and it was just very hard for me at first to tell anyone apart or keep anyone straight. So it was especially hard for me to get into it at the beginning, and to keep going. About the halfway mark, it wasn’t as hard to keep going. I guess I finally got into the story. Or.. some story. I don’t even know.

My favorite character? Elizabeth’s father. Until there’s a reference to him boffing a bunch of women. Which I suspect was added. But, again, no real idea if I’m right or not.

Okay, so the zombies themselves. They’re zombies. And you know what, I’m not really into zombies. Or zombie movies. The new vampires they’re not. So in the spirit of zombie movies, there’s gore, there’s unrealistic fight scenes, and there’s attempts at humor.

At the end of the book, there’s a discussion guide. Here’s a question not in the discussion guide:

* Elizabeth and her sisters feel pity for the zombies, embarassment when a friend is turning into one, and even spare the life of a zombie infant. Ninjas, on the other hand, Elizabeth disembowels and kills for no reason at all except to prove her competence as a fighter. Do you think this dichotomy is due to racism, classism, or something else?

The book draws in Japanese and Chinese references, as all the zombie fighters have gone to the Orient to train. One woman in particular, Catherine(?), thinks her Japanese training far superior. Elizabeth is pretty biased towards her own Chinese training.

Why then, does Elizabeth, with her Shaolin training, fight with a katana?

Why does one of the houses have nice Japanese gardens and whatnot, and a ‘coy pond’?

My answer? I think the author (no, not Jane Austen, the other one) has watched too many zombie and martial arts films, and doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about.

One final thought: too much vomit and other bodily fluids. They’re not funny. Not even the first time. Especially not in quantity. Author has also been watching too much SNL.

Long story short, this would’ve made a better short story. Or a direct-to-video movie.

Don’t read it. Seriously. Consider this my holiday gift to you. I have just saved you several hours of time that you can put to better use.

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

Review:
The plot of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is generally well known. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy meet, do not get along, form incomplete and incorrect notions of each other, see the error of their ways, and eventually end up living happily ever after. To this scenario, add some zombies, toilet humor, and a whole lot of innuendo and you have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Except that’s not entirely true, because somehow by adding more, Seth Grahame-Smith has robbed the original of nearly every bit of charm it possesses.

The version I read was the deluxe heirloom edition, which, in evident response to criticism about insufficient zombie presence, includes “new words, lines, paragraphs, and all-new scenes of ultraviolent mayhem throughout.” The black-and-white illustrations of the original edition have also been replaced by color paintings. Judging by what I’ve seen of the former, this is a vast improvement, even though Elizabeth looks to be wearing the same white gown throughout the entire novel. In the preface, Grahame-Smith describes how he came to be involved in the project (he was unfamiliar with the novel until the idea was suggested, and this definitely shows) as well as how he wrote it by obtaining an electronic copy of Austen’s novel and inserting his own text (appropriately colored red), vowing to change at least one thing on every page. Sometimes the changes are indeed just a word here or there, and sometimes entire excursions to a nearby village to fend off some “manky dreadfuls” are shoehorned in between two paragraphs. Not content to merely add text, Grahame-Smith seems to delight in removing it, as well. Among the casualties are many of the cleverest examples of Austen’s snark, especially those that reveal character, like when Austen writes of Mr. Bingley’s sisters that they “indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar relations.”

To fit the story, the characters have changed as well. Some—like Jane and Mr. Collins—manage to emerge essentially unaltered, but the leads are very different. Elizabeth is bloodthirsty, quick to consider violence as a response to dishonor, and at one point yanks out the still-beating heart of a ninja she has just defeated and takes a bite. Ew! Darcy not only has zombie-fighting prowess, he’s now a lecherous git. He’s scandalously rude to Miss Bingley, whose transparent advances he fended off in the original with implacable politeness, and often makes lewd remarks, like, “On the contrary, I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private.” Again I say, “Ew!” I used to adore this couple and now I don’t like either of them! Other crass (and needless) adjustments find both Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Gardiner engaged in extramarital affairs, Mrs. Bennet afflicted with recurring bouts of nerve-induced vomiting, and Wickham grievously injured seemingly for no other purpose than to allow for repeated references to his newfound incontinence.

By and large, the zombie encounters are boring and pointless. In this regard, I think Grahame-Smith might actually have been better served by altering the story even further. If the undead menace had progressed to such an extent that our protagonists were forced to undertake a final climactic battle, for example, then their presence might’ve been leading up to something. As it is, the biggest effect the zombies have on the plot is in providing explanations for the sudden departure of Bingley’s party after the Netherfield ball and Charlotte Lucas’ acceptance of a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins. Grahame-Smith invents a number of “dear friends” of the Bennets to serve as zombie fodder, but these passages—like the Christmas visit from an entire zombified family—are so embarrassingly banal I truly hope nobody reading this book without foreknowledge of the original thinks Austen’s work contained anything similar.

To sum up: this is exceedingly awful. Grahame-Smith butchers the characters of Pride and Prejudice more effectively than a horde of zombies ever could. I would almost go so far as to say that I outright hated it, but every so often, an untouched bit of Austen would shine through the muck and make me smile for an instant. Now I’m going to try very hard to forget I ever read this.

My Thoughts
When this book first came out, I resolved not to read it. The original Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all time, coming as close as any book has to my idea of perfection: lots of witty, interesting characters saying pithy things to one another and a happy ending to boot. I love it well enough to hate the vast majority of sequels Iâ€ve tried, because they simply couldnâ€t live up to the original, or they took liberties to which I objected.

At any rate, my resolve weakened against PPZ. The author had kept a great deal of the original text, and the juxtaposition of zombies with the social machinations of the original might be, as one of Austenâ€s characters would put it, exceedingly diverting.

The premise is this: about a half-century before our story opens, zombies suddenly began appearing to menace the living. They are witless creatures, not impossible to destroy or even to distract, but doggedly determined in their quest for brains. Zombies seem to have two sources: the already dead may rise again, and the living may be infected by exposure (such as being bitten). In response to this, the army has mobilized, and also the general citizenry has begun to train and arm itself. Even women have received some training, including women of quite high station. The opening of a new economic door to women has seemed to have an effect on society: crudeness and innuendo is more common and there is a great deal more violence.

Itâ€s clear from reading that the author has put at least a little thought into how this situation might change polite society. Unfortunately, in many cases it seems to have been very little. Itâ€s hard to tell whether this is meant to be a “serious” retelling of the story or if itâ€s just meant to be a silly parody. Different rules apply in the latter case, but just enough effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the plot and story that the argument falls flat — this is not the literary equivalent of Scary Movie. And that makes it all the more galling in the cases where it’s abundantly clear that something has been inserted only because Grahame-Smith just couldn’t resist and not because it made sense in either the original or the re-imagining.

I get the sense, too, that the author didnâ€t have a great deal of respect for(or understanding of?) some of the original characters. In several places, Austenâ€s original text is included, but the speaker (or writer) is not the same as the original book – and yet theyâ€re using the exact same phrasing. This is just sheer laziness on the part of the author. The work is almost bookended by the two of the most egregious examples of this: first, where Caroline Bingley takes over some of Darcy’s lines in an early exchange with Elizabeth, and then at the end, where a letter originally sent by Mr. Collins is penned instead by Colonel Fitzwilliam. In neither case are either pair of characters in any way similar and so the reassignment of words is out of character even within the context of this new book.

Similar problems arise when Austen’s text is revised for no apparent purpose beyond dumbing it down for the modern reader, something which happens at multiple points. A single example here will suffice to illustrate the danger of this.

Original:
“No. It would have been strange if they had. But I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.”

Zombies:
“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of putting an old woman out of her home.”

In the original text, we refer back to Mrs. Bennett’s refusal to admit that the entailment of her husband’s estate makes sense or is legitimate. Further, we have a joke: of course the entailment is pefectly legal, that is the entire problem. In the Zombie version, even though there is no zombie-related information conveyed here, the text is altered: the joke is removed and the reader is not reminded that Mrs. Bennett is ridiculous or of the inheritance situation, but instead is apparently meant to feel bad for her.

There are examples of this sort of careless editing all through the text, toning down the snarkiness of the dialogue and the narrator in some sort of misguided quest to make it more simple. In many cases, these changes cause anachronisms to creep in.

In addition to these changes, there are still more points of fail.

The illustrations: These are just awful. The clothing, which is not particularly mentioned in the text as being different in most cases, is just odd looking. Not at all correct for the time period or even sensible allowing adaptations for fighting and training.

The “Oriental” stuff: I’m not even sure where to begin with all of this. Lady Catherine with ninjas is, I’m sure, the vision that made the insertion of all of this stuff irresistible. And I wouldn’t object to it all overmuch (I leave it to someone else to complain about the potential Racefail aspects of it) were there not such a big deal made about Chinese training versus Japanese training. Because even to my non-expert eyes, it was clear to me that the author was making a distinction he was not prepared to follow through with: Chinese-trained Elizabeth fights with a Japanese sword, there are random bits of Chinese culture at Darcy’s supposedly Japan-inspired home, and so forth. If the author was actually Jane Austen, one might suppose these cross-contaminations were a subtle jibe, but unfortunately, based on the rest of the book, Grahame-Smith is incapable of such a thing.

In Short
This was actually a very clever idea, and I think it could have been very good, with just a bit more effort expended on research and editing. Unfortunately, as it stands, this was definitely a failure, as a parody (not enough liberty was taken) and as a true rewrite (it was too slap-dash and sloppy). I don’t quite regret reading it, but I definitely won’t ever be reading it again, nor will I be picking up the next book, even though it’s to have a different author.

This story covers the part of the lives of Patience and Sarah that I was most interested in reading about. I wanted to hear about how they set up their home, built it up, made it cozy, faced adversity, got along with the neighbors, etc, etc.

Well, I got an itty bitty bit of that from this story. Lesigh.

The first part, and the large part it, is told from the point of view of a neighboring farmer. And his view of the women is very weird. He seems to think they’re strange, and not get that they’re shacking up together, of course. But he also goes on and on admiring them. Wanting them to be independent and succeed. All the while snickering behind his wife’s back that she thinks the women would be fine wives for their sons. He thinks they’re unsuitable for his sons because.. well, I think basically because they’d be hard to control and just not very pleasant to be married to.

That’s not resolved or anything, but they all pay a visit (sons included), and think the house is dressed up rather frivolously, with all of Patience’s pictures that they don’t realize are Patience’s. And then the wife comes out of it not liking them at all, for some slight or other.

Then we get Sarah’s point of view for a bit. In which we get a completely silly scene involving Patience thinking to be fair and equal, she needs to work in the fields. Which is completely ridiculous if they expect to survive on this stupid farm. She decides she’s rubbish at the hoeing and whatnot, because she’s not wearing pants. So then, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WORKING DAY, they trot back home so Sarah can undress and a pattern of her clothes can be cut, so Patience can make similar clothes for herself.

And well, that’s about it. The story, or the novel fragment, or whatever you want to call it, stops.

Two girls try to play house and farm, and are all set to utterly fail and starve to death.

And when family pressures separated them, the two women dreamed of leaving their homes, of being together. Defying society and history, they bought a farm and discovered they could live together, away from a world that had put limits on them and their love.

Review:
Patience White has been provided for. Her fatherâ€s will made certain that there would always be a place for her in her devout brotherâ€s Connecticut home, but that isnâ€t enough to make Patience happy. She doesnâ€t want the things that a woman of her age (late twenties) should want, and though she helps out around the house, Edwardâ€s wife, Martha, makes her feel guilty for desiring privacy to work on her paintings. When she meets Sarah Dowling, conscripted to serve as “Paâ€s boy” in the absence of any male siblings and entirely unaware that her manners shock more proper folk, she is immediately intrigued.

Kisses soon ensue, followed by Sarahâ€s inability to realize that some things should be kept secret, a journey in boyâ€s clothes, vague yet plentiful sex scenes, manipulation by Patience to get Sarah to agree to come away with her, familial discovery, further journeying, and finally settling into farm life in New York. The narrative alternates between perspectives with occasionally amusing results (I enjoyed their differing accounts of their final parting with Edward) but with much repetition, since each woman experiences periods of insecurity as well as triumph in the knowledge that she can leave the other wanting her. One strange side effect was that although I disliked Sarah at the beginning of the novel, due to her remarkable lack of common sense, by the end I thought she was by far the better (and more genuine) of the two, since Patience could be deceitful in her quest to get her way.

I had expected, owing largely to the rhapsodies experienced by the leads in Annie on My Mind as they read and reread this book, that Patience & Sarah would be at least a little romantic, but really, it is not. Instead, Iâ€d describe it as carnal. When I say that “kisses soon ensue,” I mean really soon, and with little preamble as to why these women are drawn to each other. Suddenly, itâ€s just instant passion. There are some parts of the novel that I liked—slice-of-life passages about chopping wood and sewing curtains, card games they play with Sarahâ€s mother, or the stray dog that promptly adopts them when they get to their new home—but I couldnâ€t care much about the characters or their relationship. Plus, all the parts that I liked are sullied by the ending, in which Patience declares that now that they have their own place they will “make the bed gallop,” which makes it seem that everything theyâ€ve done has been with coital goals in mind.

Another thing I noticed is that nearly everyone else in the novel is made to desire the protagonists. Sarahâ€s sister offers to do for her whatever Patience does (eww), itâ€s suspected that Edward likes to imagine the two of them together, Sarahâ€s traveling companion tries to put the moves on her (granted, he thinks sheâ€s a boy at the time), and one of Marthaâ€s main objections to the relationship is that Patience is fooling around with someone “outside of the family.” Iâ€m not sure what to make of this, honestly. With Edward and Martha it could be a case of pointing out their hypocrisy, but what of the others?

In the end, Patience & Sarah was not what Iâ€d expected it to be. If this had been a straight romance, I might not even have finished it.

My Thoughts
I’m going to try something different this time and write a running review as I make my way through the book.

I’ll be upfront: I was reluctant to read this book in the first place, but eventually capitulated. So I had a prejudice against it from the get go. This was not improved upon seeing the book’s cover, which for some reason turns me off utterly. The image is not actually that awful — two women, presumably Patience and Sarah — in somewhat cartoony form, standing next to one another. It generated instant hate in me and destroyed any possible urge to want to read the book.

So I didn’t. Eventually putting it off added its own block to my resistance to reading it and it became extremely difficult to pick it up. I finally forced myself to do so by bringing only it to work with me and reading it during my meal break.

The book thus far is decidedly mediocre. I venture to say that had this book not involved two women, it would have been long forgotten and weeded from any library collection. But it does and so achieves a status I’m not sure it really deserves.

Patience and Sarah inhabit an intensely chauvinistic world, where women have little value other than as baby machines. Their opinions are neither respected nor sought and they are made old before their time with repeated childbearing. The menfolk around them seem aware of the strange difference in status between men and women, mildly puzzled by it, but not especially driven to fix it. The women seem aware as well, but again, have no interest in fixing it. I’m sure this is a true description to some extent, but something about it just feels… off. Almost everyone around them seems beaten down and lifeless — Patience’s sister-in-law Martha, Sarah’s mother and father — unable to take joy in anything at all without the assistance of Patience herself.

Patience and Sarah find each other seemingly by chance. I found the development of their relationship to be too quick for my taste. First they’ve barely met and then suddenly they’re going to run away together and Sarah is enduring multiple beatings from her father because of her flaming passion for Patience? Eh. (Let it be said that I find this sort of goings on in heterosexual relationships twinky as well.) Perhaps it was meant as some kind of lame Romeo and Juliet metaphor (see previous comment about heterosexual twinkiness).

In any case, because they know each other hardly at all, they end up essentially breaking up over a misunderstanding (now there’s a plot I love. Not.) and Sarah sets off on her own disguised as a boy. Except that she doesn’t really have any idea of what ‘setting off on her own’ entails and she ends up wandering around western New England with a Minister who apparently has a weakness for young men. Huck Finn she is not.

Eventually Sarah returns, having failed at accomplishing much of anything, and Patience, who mysteriously has been allowed to work as a school teacher (this also struck me as odd; it had been my impression that the teaching profession as staffed mostly by young women was a post Civil War innovation) decides that they are going to get back together. By this point I was finding it really hard to muster any sort of interest at all in their doings, so their subsequent naughty make-out sessions at Patience’s house did little for me.

As the book continued, it seemed more clear that their relationship, while it may have had physical attraction, didn’t really seem founded on any sort of rational basis. They still hardly knew one another at all, and there was very little mutual respect or trust. One or the other of them seemed to be constantly in a panic that the other was no longer interested in them or would be mad about some random deception. Which deception would never have been necessary had they been actual friends who had real conversations.

That they had started to develop this sort of by the end of the book was good, except — it was the end of the book.

In Short
I didn’t go into this book with a good attitude and the book didn’t manage to erase my prejudice with its sheer awesomeness. The relationship between Patience and Sarah was poorly developed and I never managed to find myself concerned about their well-being or their eventual success in life.

But they will not journey alone, as they acquire comrades along the way. As the ill-assorted crew is tested and tempered on its journey to where great rivers join, Fawn and Dag will discover surprising new abilities both Lakewalker and farmer, a growing understanding of the bonds between themselves and their kinfolk, and a new world of hazards both human and uncanny.

Review:
After one book taking place primarily in the farmer world and another that focuses on Lakewalker life, Passage, the third book in The Sharing Knife series, finds Dag and Fawn working to bring those two worlds closer together. Having witnessed the loss of life caused by farmers’ ignorance of the warning signs of a forming Malice, and not willing to stay at a camp at which the validity of his marriage is questioned, Dag gives up his patroller life and decides to become an ambassador of sorts, explaining some of the most fundamental Lakewalker secrets to what farmers as will listen.

After a brief stay with Fawn’s family, Dag and Fawn (along with her brother, Whit) hit the road, visiting a few towns and eventually booking passage on the Fetch, a flatboat headed downriver to the sea. From there, they encounter a variety of (mostly) likable characters, like Berry (boss of the Fetch), Remo and Barr (a pair of disgraced young patrollers), and a bevy of other boatmen. Dag performs several impressive feats of healing, works out some finer details of groundwork, ponders some troubling questions, and makes a lot of rather repetitive speeches. The action picks up a little when Berry’s search for her missing father, brother, and fiancé yields some unexpected results, and Dag is ultimately forced to question whether farmers and Lakewalkers aren’t better off living separate lives after all.

Although parts of Passage are quite slow—like the speeches and the many discussions on the ethics of Dag’s developing abilities—it’s still my favorite of the series thus far, a factor I attribute mostly to the influx of new people. Suddenly, a series that has been almost exclusively about two characters has developed an ensemble cast, and I find it to be a big improvement. My favorite of the new characters is actually not so new—Fawn’s brother Whit has been around before, but really becomes a new person due to the things he sees and experiences on this journey.

Whit’s growth also serves a handy example for one of my favorite things about the series: women’s roles. Bujold manages to show women in positions of power—boat captains, patrol leaders—about as often as women living more domestic lives without making a judgment about which has more value. Whit, having grown up on a farm, is used to men being in charge, and early on accuses Fawn of being “just a girl.” Dag expertly turns this around to talk about all of the brave and valiant things his first wife, Kauneo, accomplished when she was “just a girl.” After witnessing Fawn’s practical cleverness on several occasions, and having his notions of gender roles challenged by Berry, with whom he falls in love, Whit comes to value Fawn’s input in a way that the rest of her family does not.

Despite enjoying Passage quite a bit, I find I have some trepidations about Horizon the fourth and final volume in the series. I do like Dag and Fawn, but they weren’t the main attraction for me this time. I hope Berry, Whit, Remo, and Barr have significant roles in Horizon else I shall be disappointed.

Patience and Sarah is a historical novel about two women on neighboring farms who find each other and start making plans to move out “West”. And I have to put that in quotes, because if upstate New York is out West, then why didn’t anyone teach me how to lasso a dogie when I was growing up?

What struck me when I first started reading it was the rhythm. It put my head in a calm sort of place and after my first session or two of reading, the book hung around in my head as I was doing other things. I don’t know if that’s the sign of a good book, the sign of a book that’s something new and different for me, or maybe the sign of a book that I’m reading at the right place and time for the universe to align. I won’t say it rarely happens, but it doesn’t usually happen when I’m reading a book, that the world and characters stick with me and I’m eager to go back to reading.

Patience is an old maid of 20-something (and if I hadn’t forgotten, I could tell you the exact number) living with her brother and his wife and their children. She’s got a pretty sweet setup, as her father cared enough about her to provide in his will for her. She’s guaranteed a room of her own and two cows and whatnot. Her only real problem is she doesn’t get along with her sister-in-law and feels obligated to help out with the chores rather than spend time painting as she’d like to. I started being interested in her at this point. She’s got an unusual setup and doesn’t seem to be all ‘woe is me, I’ll never get a man’. Breath of fresh air, that.

Then we, and Patience, meet Sarah. Sarah’s from a farming family that only managed to produce girls. So her father chose her as the biggest and strongest of the girls to turn into a boy. Their family doesn’t go to church or seem to interact much with their neighbors, so mostly being a boy means she helps out with the boy chores, and dresses in a practical boy fashion for doing so. Her hair’s long though.

They meet, they fall in love, they talk about moving to York State together, Sarah blabs about it, families get in an uproar. Sarah sets off on her own instead. And here’s the most annoying part of the book for me. I wanted them both to set off together and build a life together. I wanted the book to be about that. Instead we get Sarah going off as a man to make her way in the world and buy some land and set up a life for herself. But she’s rubbish at it. No one believes she’s 21. They all think she’s an escaped apprentice. So, rather than lie and say she’s 15 or a more reasonable age for a boy with no stubble, and make up a nice non-apprenticey story to go with it, she just keeps telling the truth and getting into trouble. But she meets up with someone who doesn’t care and her world is broadened. And then she goes home.

And Patience and Sarah clear up some misunderstanding or something stupid and angsty. And they start meeting regularly for makeout sessions on Patience’s bed. And here’s another annoying part of the book. Because I was never clear on how far they went. First base was obvious, second base is touched upon, but then it’s all vagueness. Grr. I don’t care if it’s all implied. Just make sure you’re implying in a way that’s clear to me.

More trouble ensues, but I’ll leave the rest in non-spoilery territory.

One very awesome thing in this book is the point of view. I think Miller actually taught me something here, as I came to realize what she was doing, rather than just noticing it. At first, the story is told by Patience in first person. She’s even the one to relate Sarah’s point of view, in a way that makes it clear Sarah must have told her about those parts at some point in the future. But she also slips in little comments about what Sarah must have been thinking or feeling, or how other characters must’ve been thinking or feeling, that contradict what Sarah told her about the situation.

When Sarah goes off on her own, we finally get her point of view straight from the horse’s mouth, and we see what we knew all along. That she’s not as ignorant and naive as Patience seems to think she is. Though she is a bit. It’s not a radical change.

Then when they meet up again, we get more of Patience’s little comments. So you come to really get a sense for Patience’s personality just from how Miller used point of view. Patience thinks she’s better than Sarah in a lot of ways; more well-bred, more sophisticated, older, smarter, wiser. You get the sense she’d like to think she’s in control of the relationship. While Sarah’s on the other side striving for equality and the give-and-take the relationship’s going to need if it’s going to last.

So, cool book. It’s one I’d read again. Even while wishing they’d gone out West to set up their little homestead in chapter 3. Maybe I’ll have to be the one to write that book.