Lois Mcmaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors.

I really enjoyed the first book of the Sharing Knife series, not only for its interesting twist on the whole fantasy world with magic (she has "groundsense" which is kind of like "the force" in a way, and two peoples in her world "farmers" who can't feel it, and "lakewalkers" who have groundsense and whose life purpose is to find and kill "malices" or magical creatures that kill.) but also for the may-december romance between a farmer girl and an old lakewalker. Usually that kind of thing turns me off, but it was handled believably and well here.

But I was reluctant to read the second book. I was afraid it would be "more of the same" without the budding romance to keep me involved in the story.

And for the first part of the book, this was true. And although I knew that the majority of this book would be about how the farmer girl is not accepted by the rest of the lakewalkers, I found myself drawn into the story.

And I should have trusted this author. Her development of the magic (without taking the easy way out and just giving magic to the farmer) made it very interesting.

I don't recommend reading this without reading the first one before, as it would definitely not be as interesting. However, if you liked the first book. You'll probably like this one, although I liked the first one better.

Guardedly recommended.