The Plot
Fawn and Dag, newly married, head off to break the disturbing news to Dag’s Lakewalker kinfolk. The reaction is almost universally poor, and Dag’s immediately family take it especially badly. But the pair attempt to settle in and find their place anyway. Unfortunately, news from a neighboring area calls Dag away to fight a surprisingly strong malice, and Fawn is left at camp for a time to fend for herself. The pair are finally reunited after several harrowing experiences that still don’t convince the Lakewalkers of Fawn’s worth as a person. In the end, Dag and Fawn break ties with the camp and set off on their own.
My Thoughts
In the first book, very little about the Lakewalker home life is revealed to the reader, and the reader is left to draw conclusions based on inference and a tiny bit of actual information. It’s very easy to fall into the assumption, which I freely admit doing, that because the Lakewalkers presented such a contrast to the farmers in how they viewed and treated women, their culture must be more liberal and open. We discover pretty quickly in Legacy that such is not the case. In fact, the Lakewalkers are mostly a bunch of dicks.
Dag begins the book immediately on the defensive, much to Fawn’s dismay. She feels that his family (and culture in general) can’t really be that bad, and that she’ll have a shot at winning them over in the way he did most of her family. Resulting events suggest that he was correct, though it’s not clear to me that the outcome was completely inevitable. All the same, it was not very evitable and the sequence of events did not strain my view of the characters or their world very much.
We spend the first third of the book dealing with Fawn and Dag’s arrival at Hickory Lake camp and the assorted reactions of the Lakewalkers to their marriage. It’s here that the arrogance and calcification of the Lakewalker world view becomes clear. We learn more about the background of the world, which is apparently post-apocalyptic: at some point in the distant, distant past, a group of genetically enhanced “Lords” caused a disaster from which sprang the seeds that grow into malices. This disaster also drastically reduced the human population and led to the loss of most advanced technology and historical records from that time. The Lakewalkers, with their abilities to see and manipulate ground, feel that they are the descendants of these enhanced beings, and spend a great deal of time patting themselves on the back over their decision not to rule over the inferior farmers.
It soon becomes clear to the reader, however, that the Lakewalkers, in separating themselves from the farmers, have completely lost touch with the reality of the world and are falling behind technologically. Though Dag attempts to cast the problem in terms of Malice threat — what if the Malice comes up in a farmer city with well-trained craftsmen — it isn’t hard to extrapolate that pretty soon the farmers are going to lose their last thread of patience with the Lakewalkers’ bad attitude and may be fed up enough to attempt to rid themselves of their presence. This, of course, would be a disaster for everyone, but the farmers don’t know it and the Lakewalkers are too full of themselves to pass this information along.
This problem eventually comes to a head when, after several situations where Fawn again and again proves herself as capable and smart as Lakewalkers, Dag’s mother and brother make a last maneuver to try and get her thrown out of the camp and the marriage annulled. Dag has had enough, and realizes that he’s never going to figure out how to solve the problem of Lakewalker/Farmer friction if he stays in camp, so tells everyone off and then declares that he’s getting the hell out. The Lakewalkers are shocked, since their worldview does not permit even the idea that someone would prefer to live other than with their awesomeness.
After this scene, it became clear to me that the whole book had been working up to this point, and that what I thought was the goal — for Fawn and Dag to work within the Lakewalkers to effect change — was never the point at all. Dag needed to see that a single pair within the camp was simply not enough pressure to dislodge their very entrenched attitudes. So they leave in search of more leverage, though I couldn’t figure at that point what it might be.
Throughout the book an additional sub plot continues with Dag’s exploration of grounds, healing, and the relationship between what malicies do and what the Lakewalkers do. It seems mostly incidental here in spite of Dag’s vague angst about it all, but will probably be important later.
In Short
I didn’t really enjoy this book as much as the first one. The romance seemed to take a backseat to the description of Lakewalker society and attitudes. While all of the information is useful and important to the continuing series plot, it just wasn’t as interesting to me as the character development of Fawn and Dag as individuals and more importantly the development of them as a couple. I find them far more compelling when they’re together and operating as a team than when they are apart, and it felt like they spent a great deal of this book divided. On the other hand, a weak Bujold is still much better than most other books, and this one was necessary in many ways to further the actual plot now that the romance was solidly established.
It just occurred to me that neither of us mentioned the threesome. That’s odd of us! :) I liked seeing more of those two, now together again with their wife and children. Bujold’s pretty good about giving us some minor characters with unique attributes and relationships. Though sometimes I wish they weren’t always the minor characters!
I think I might have to agree with you that Fawn and Dag are more interesting when they’re together. Though that could be my continued disinterest in the fighting of the malices.
Yeah, I’m not really into the whole malice thing either. You haven’t gotten far into book 3 yet, have you?
She does do nice with background chars. Vorkosigan gives her more of a chance to follow up on some of them, it being longer. But there are a few there where that hasn’t happened either and I want to know more.
I haven’t started book 3.
After this scene, it became clear to me that the whole book had been working up to this point, and that what I thought was the goal — for Fawn and Dag to work within the Lakewalkers to effect change — was never the point at all. Dag needed to see that a single pair within the camp was simply not enough pressure to dislodge their very entrenched attitudes.
That’s a really good point. I hadn’t really considered the possibility that the more-advanced farmers might at some point revolt against the Lakewalkers of whom they believe so many bad things.
It was on my mind from the start, because I had been looking for parallels between the whole white settlers (farmers) and Native Americans (Lakewalkers). And, of course, what did the white settlers do to the Native Americans? It seemed mostly that this had not happened yet because the farmer population hadn’t reached critical mass, but this point was getting closer.
Interesting. So this series has a small trace of Historical Fantasy to it, as well. :) It’s not using as direct a substitution as the works of Guy Gavriel Kay (where you can tell that certain characters are meant to be certain historical figures) but it draws some on a real conflict.
I don’t think I really saw the Lakewalkers as Native American. Maybe I’ve read too much fantasy and science fiction with similar cultures to draw an exact line to Native Americans specifically.
But now that you say that and with the plot of Passage and the author’s note at the end, yea, I can see it. Which makes me think of the lack of language barrier. Here’s two groups living side by side and being very careful about limiting their interactions with each other and neither going in for intermarrying, and they don’t even have the excuse of speaking different languages.
I didn’t say they were intended to be Native Americans necessarily. I just saw that there was a parallel there between the way the two groups were living/interacting.