(Cross-posting to myself what I wrote in a comment on another journal; some repetition of things mentioned in a previous post.)

Regarding the opinion that The Sharing Knife is a plot-deficient romance novel:

I agree that Bujold is generally either more epic (eg. Chalion) or explosive (anything in the vicinity of Miles) so TSK is a bit of a departure. I think, though, that some of the epic and explosive stuff may turn up in the second volume to surprise us -- keeping in mind that Beguilement was really only half a book.

That said, I'll be quite happy even if Legacy is just more of the same -- I got the feeling, while reading Beguilement, that I was reading Fawn/Dag shippy fanfic, in that expound-the-romance, PWP kind of way. I think the way Bujold described her experience of writing TSK explains it (fake cut to interview):

("Really, there's no excuse for this book; I just wrote what I liked.")