Bujold's Legacy

[jmc_bks]

I don't think I wrote a review or an opinion of Beguilement when it was released, although I listed it among the Best of 2006 reads. And I think I voted for Dag as the Best Hero over at AAR's annual poll. Now that I've read Legacy, there are a few things that have crystalized and some more things swirling about in my brain.

First and foremost is how much these Sharing Knife books and their world building remind me of American Westerns in Romance. I know a lot of readers would say that Bujold is writing fantasy with a romance thread but not romance. And I'll agree there, primarily because although I hope Dag and Fawn will have a permanent HEA, I don't think that's necessarily going to be the climax of the series (it may accompany whatever action occurs then, though). But I still think the comparison is apt. The Lakewalkers are like Native Americans in genre romance: the forbidden, the unknown, the mysterious; the Farmers are the settlers who keep pushing forward without really understanding the impact they are having on the environment. And the relationship between Dag & Fawn, and the rejection they face from their own people, is very much in keeping with genre romance (and real life, I'm sure). One significant difference between AWR and TSK being not just conflict about ownership of land and a way of life but about supernatural threats that hide within the earth in certain places. (Can you imagine what a malice and its mud-men would've done to Manifest Destiny?)

Second thought: while Dag is still heroic in Legacy, I found him less admirable. He made a hard choice in the end, and he saved people from the Big Bad, but his woodenness and unwillingness to confront his family frustrated me very much.

I'm wondering what role, if any, his ghost hand is going to play going forward. I want to know more (much more) about the old lords, and about making. I also want to know if the magic/ground-handling is the reason that Lakewalkers have such long lives and age slowly in comparison to Farmer Folk.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps it's the sort of story where you bring your own cultural references to the plot - I wouldn't have thought of the parallel to the settlers, but thought instead in terms of the obvious parallels with sectarianism here. The part about the cords at the council rang so true.

I'm not sure I agree that Dag should have been willing to confront his family. What could he have expected to get out of that confrontation - would he have been doing anything more than expressing the reader's indignation at their behaviour?

Marianne McA

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I originally thought of the Lakewalker/Farmer divide as being more a religious or sectarian one: the misunderstanding of two groups who don't communicate and who live separately. The Farmer belief that Lakewalkers were cannibals reminded me of the belief that Christians were too because of the consumption of the "blood" and "body" of Christ.

My change in perspective occured when the Lakewalkers got pushback from the Farmers when they warned them not to try to resettle their town. This reminded me of all of the Indian wars of the 18th century and the painful American history that resulted because of Manifest Destiny and two opposing ideas about the "ownership" of land and natural resources. (Except the Lakewalkers are unlike Native Americans in the sense that they are remaining unsettled as a function of some historic magical guilt.)

Maybe "confront" was the wrong word. I thought Dag was extremely passive and ostrich-like, with his head buried in the sand, about the damage that his family could and would do. A confrontation likely wouldn't have solved anything, you're right. But I would've liked to see him make an active response to them, instead of just ignoring it and hoping their displeasure would go away. Obviously, they were busy lobbying; was he? Seemed more like he was hiding.