Books Read

36. Knife Children, Lois McMaster Bujold.  A novella in the Sharing Knife universe, which is a pretty strange fantasy land that suffered a magical apocalypse at least a thousand years ago and I have no idea how they managed to figure out a way to kill Malices* by trial and error before all humans went extinct.  But the characters are mostly interesting people and their troubles are understandable.

*A Malice is a magic-eater with a multi-stage life. When young it is effectively a Grog, a sessile eater that controls animal life around it. Then it gets to reshape animals, including humans, into "mudman" servants. Then it gets up and starts to expand its range.

How do you kill a thing like that? You need a knife made from the bone of someone who has performed a particular (voluntary) ritual, and then the bone knife is used to kill another such someone (which allows their bones to be turned into knives) and then you can kill a Malice with it. Otherwise, they appear to be immortal. How does that get started?