The Sharing Knife by Lois Bujold McMaster

I consumed a huge portion of this book on a plane ride back from Tampa, Florida over the long weekend and finished the thing last night while hubby and I laid in bed and read for three totally indulgent hours. Usually I have to read in 35 minute intervals while walking on the treadmill, so to have such dedicated chunks of time to read was sublime.

McMaster is an expert storyteller—she makes it look so easy and she has such a good sense of what to tweak to make the world she is describing seem real, but not so much that you can’t relate. I LOVED the concept of groundsense (an ability the hero has to sense living creatures—and, critically, non-living creatures--around him), but I had a hard time with the winter/spring romance. As someone who reads for romantic tension, I felt like the novel didn’t offer enough of that in the last act. Part of this, of course, is the difficulty in writing a trilogy about the same couple. There are just going to be points with less dramatic tension. I struggled with the Warprize series for the same reason. But that complaint aside, McMaster is so good, I think I’ll be borrowing the next book in the series from my s-i-l.