A review by batesbarb
Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

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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