"The Sharing Knife: Beguilement (Vol. I)" by Lois McMaster Bujold

Review of "The Sharing Knife: Beguilment (Vol. I)" by Lois McMaster Bujold

(points out of 10, highest possible total = 100)

Introduction - 8
Character development - 8
Main character(s) - 7
Supporting characters - 8
Antagonist(s) - 10
Dialogue - 8
Prose - 7
Plot development - 7
Overall story - 7
Denouement - 7

Total - 77

The introduction was at that difficult-to-achieve medium between boring description and completely-takes-you-by-surprise plunge. I appreciated some interesting hooks that weren't quite explained yet, but also the fact that Bujold felt compelled to give a little third-person background. (I've started reading the first book in the True Blood series, and that one is extremely annoying in its introduction: completely first person, with a too-intimate voice, as if you know everything about the protagonist already. Also, totally improbable. But this I will save for later).
Character development was done seamlessly, even if it didn't take quite as long as Goodkind did for Richard/Kahlan, for example. It mostly was a thought, then a background, then tra la la things happen, oh! some interesting and relevant news from the past! Good setup.
The main characters were quite good. Believable, capable of existing, but each with some special kind of spark that distinguishes from normalcy.
For clarification: There are two different kinds of people in this series. There are "farmers", who include farmers but also townspeople with any number of different livelihoods. Basically, farmers are people who aren't Lakewalkers. Lakewalkers, on the other hand, are these kinds of nomadic, magical people who look down on farmers as helpless, rather stupid sheep that need protecting. Farmers view Lakewalkers as evil cannibals, with lots of overgrown horror stories.
We open with Fawn, who is very small, cute and rather naive. She is 18, a farmer girl, unhappily pregnant and unmarried, traveling by herself to distant town. Her one quirk is that she is quite smart, but her entire family sees her nonstop questions as a sign of being "stupid", so she presents low self-esteem, even though she trusts in herself, etc.
The other main character, Dag, is "old" (we later find out he's 55 - Lakewalkers live longer than farmers, so he looks about 35-40), a Lakewalker patroller; he is very intense, can be lethal and has a troubled past, kind of like that veteran who to strangers seems harmless but his friends know to treat him with respect. His groundsense, a special 6th sense kind of feeling that is sensitive to all life, including peoples' emotions, is extremely powerful for a Lakewalker (who have it, while farmers don't).
I took some points away because Bujold made Dag a little too intense. He lost his left hand in battle and has all these attachments for it, and by the middle of the book he's broken his right arm, too. Also, even though I know it's supposed to be shocking... an 18 year old and a 55 year old?! COME ON.
Supporting characters had enough personality to lend a real background. Fawn's family, with the grim father, busy mother, extremely annoying older brothers and loving aunt, were very convincing. Dag's older but she-means-business aunt patrol leader and friendly, full of pranks patrollers didn't have as much buildup, but from what I can tell, they will in the next book - along with his family.
Antagonists get a 10 because it was something new that didn't resemble anything else I'd heard before. There are "malices", evil creatures that suck life out of the ground, steal animals and shape them into human-like creatures ("mud-men") who are very strong and completely controlled by the malice. They can also snare people and control their mind, but only after they've grown a bit. Unless someone kills them, they will just keep growing and growing and eventually, theoretically, kill all life on earth. The only way to kill them is to "share" a death with them, since they are technically immortal and don't know how to die. This brings in the sharing knives, which are bones (mostly thighbones) from Lakewalkers who donated theirs upon their death and "primed" with the death of another Lakewalker (usually as they were just about to die, they will stab themselves in the heart). Only these primed sharing knives can kill malices. These practices grew into the cannibalism tales told by farmers about Lakewalkers, obviously.
The dialogue was fine, not Stephenie Meyer quality (aka absolutely riveting), but not boring or too long either. Since dialogue is a tough thing to do right, that's an 8 in my book.
Prose gets one point less than dialogue because Bujold kept doing this weird thing with interposing little thoughts in between a sentence, which can be helpful but it also was distracting and a little confusing at times. She switched back and forth between Fawn's and Dag's viewpoints with decent fluency, and I got used to the inserted bits after a while.
The plot development was flying ahead nicely in the first half of the book, where there were fight scenes, daring rescues, evil mud-men and malices, some love interest... and then in the second half it fulfilled the love interest bit (I'm used to waiting 3-4 books for that! Too quick!) and focused entirely on it for the rest of the time. No more skirmishes, raids or escapes :(. I can't complain that the love story was boring, because it wasn't, but I like that stuff mixed in there - not becoming the whole show! Also, the apparent driving force of the second book is only mentioned here and there and I'm still kind of confused about what it actually is. Obscurity, much?
The overall story was good, at least interesting enough to start the second book. I want some more evils to fight, though.
The denouement was kind of a disappointment - there is a kind of fight scene as the climax in there, but it's easily dealt with and then what you expected just kind of happens and then... they... ride off into the woods, and the book's over.

The next one in the series is "The Sharing Knife: Legacy (Vol. II)" - that review will come soon!