Bujold creates a new and interesting world in which the boogeyman -- or "Blight Boggles" (the name the farmers give it) or "Malice" (the lakewalker term) -- turn out to be real and more frightening than children's stories imagine.
Young Fawn is running from home with a hidden pregnancy when she's snatched by a Malice but quickly rescued by Dag, a lakewalker. She becomes entangled in his world when she wields and "primes" one of the sharing knives employed by the lakewalkers in Malice battles. In short order, the barely-legal Fawn and the triple-her-age widower Dag are graphically pleasuring each other (I mean, if I were 14 I would've been SO INTO these passages...but they simply came off as unnecessary and voyeuristic and kinda yucky at this point).
The remainder of the book abandons the interesting world of Lakewalkers and Malices and focuses on getting Fawn's family on-board with the coupling. Yawn.
C
