Beguilement
core novel 2006 The Sharing Knife
Record
| First published | 2006 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.76 (13,795 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780061137587 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Beguilement is the first volume of Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy romance series The Sharing Knife. It follows Fawn Bluefield, a young farmer woman fleeing a difficult past and an unplanned pregnancy, who sets out alone for a nearby city only to encounter Dag Redwing Hickory, a one-armed Lakewalker patroller decades her senior who hunts soul-devouring creatures called malices that threaten farmers and Lakewalkers alike. When Fawn is caught in a malice attack, Dag's intervention and the sharing knife of the title, a weapon carved from a Lakewalker's own bones and meant to kill a malice at the cost of the wielder's life, draw the two of them into an unlikely partnership. Their growing bond crosses a deep cultural divide between Fawn's farming people and Dag's secretive, magically gifted Lakewalkers, who normally keep well apart from one another.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Sharing Knife
- Series: The Sharing Knife core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Notes
- From the series record (The Sharing Knife): The four-book main sequence, published as a continuous quartet 2006-2009.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Sharing Knife: position 1 of 4: next Legacy (2007)
- Internal chronology, within The Sharing Knife: position 1 of 5: next Legacy (2007)
Sources
← The Sharing Knife dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.