Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Beguilement

Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

12 reviews

hwesta's review against another edition

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

Definitely a fantasy romance - I really enjoyed both the worldbuilding (malices! Groundsense! Lakewalkers vs farmers!) and the romance.

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hotwaterbottle's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Conflicted on this one! Fascinating system of magic (the knives) and strong world-building (attitudes between Lakewalkers and "farmers"). However, the pacing was very front-loaded (

lots of action at the beginning, then just kind of...hanging out for the rest of the book

). I would probably still keep going, except for the elephant in the room: the main characters'

massive age difference—18 and 55 🤮

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batesbarb's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

There was some really interesting world building here, and I've enjoyed a lot of Bujold's other fantasy writing, so I was prepared to enjoy the heck out of this book. Unfortunately, I found the central romance so gross and upsetting that it destroyed my enjoyment of the book completely. Our central romance is between Fawn, a farmer girl who has left home to hide her shameful pregnancy. She claims to be twenty, but, EVERY SINGLE PERSON who meets her initially thinks she's twelve or so because she's so small, and looks so young. The book never misses an opportunity to remind us how small and how innocent and how young-looking she is. Several people in the story only realize she's not a child when they see she has breasts (we're going to walk right past the profoundly gross implications of "has breasts"="not a child" as a general approach).

In comes her love interest, Dag. A fully grown, long widowed lakewalker (a thinly veiled indigenous society, presented with a definite undertone of "noble savage"). He falls madly in love with Fawn, rescues her from an attempted rape/murder, and the rest of the story is mostly them falling in love. He is described over and over being charmed by how small she is, how innocent she is, etc etc etc.

Later on in the book, we discover that

Fawn is actually 18, instead of her claimed 20, and Dag is 55

. Like, there's May/December romance, then there's whatever the hell this is. I had to force myself to finish the book, and I have zero interest in reading anything else in this series.

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vivillini's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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penguingin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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napthenknit's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Fun and lighthearted fantasy romance. There were lots of interesting breadcrumbs of world building that I am excited to explore more in future books.

I was very impressed with how the author wrote a character missing a hand, and another character experiencing

a miscarriage

.

I was a little less impressed with the stereotypically naive Fawn, but she learned and grew throughout the book, so I can forgive it.

Audiobook narrator: Bernadette Dunne. I thought she did a good job, she has a very expressive voice.

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