Horizon

Title:	Horizon
Author:	Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre:	Fantasy
Series:	Sharing Knife (4)
Ranking:	?Unranked
LibraryThing:	Title:Horizon ISBN:978-0-06-137536-1 (Add Book)
Type:	Owned
Read:	2009-06-16

As Dag's maker abilities have grown, so has his concern about who or what he is becoming. At the end of a great river journey, Dag is offered an apprenticeship to a master groundsetter in a southern Lakewalker camp. But as his understanding of his powers deepens, so does his frustration with the camp's rigid mores with respect to farmers...

Thoughts

So, the story continues at an easy pace, with people-conflicts and decisions, questions and discoveries. It's almost amusing how their little band keeps on getting bigger as they go along, which turns into both help and hindrance when the action-packed climax arrives. And I have to say, this particular battle left me with my heart in my mouth at least twice, where I was thinking "Oh my goodness! How on earth are they going to get out of this?"

It looks like this is the last book in the series, since the plot-threads have basically been wrapped up now.

In a way, this series makes me think of the Earth's Children series, with Dag in the role of Ayla; he keeps on inventing things nobody has thought of, he's had near-exile breaks with his clan, he makes medicine... though in other ways, quite different. For one thing, he isn't a youngster. He's so fantastically good at his craft because he's had decades of experience. So in that way he's more like Cazaril or Ista (from this author's "Curse of Chalion" series).

I wouldn't be surprised if the author had originally intended this to be a two-book series, and then found that the story expanded into four books. Mind you, part of that I think is because this series doesn't have a particularly fast pace. Oh, it isn't boring, but a lot of it is characters talking or thinking, plus a bunch of world-building.

I wonder what she'll write next?