Mass Market Paperback, 512 pages
English language
Published Nov. 28, 2000 by Baen.
it was enjoyable but i didn't get drawn into the characters much. I'm still going to read the sequel though!
I am not impressed. While I have often issues with the language this time it's complicated. I enjoyed this book up until Paks' training is finished. After that I had to force myself to finish reading the book. About 70% of the book are about the various campaigns and battles. All the characters - including Paks herself - remain flat and lifeless. I don't really care what happens to them. There are hints throughout the book that there is more to Paks than meets the eye but until the end it's all just hints. My favorite chapter was the one about Cal and the Honeycat towards the end. There is next to no character development. The settings lacks detail. The antagonist remains a faceless evil man whose motivations and personality never play a role.
The story starts out with much potential but I am not willing to try to read …
I am not impressed. While I have often issues with the language this time it's complicated. I enjoyed this book up until Paks' training is finished. After that I had to force myself to finish reading the book. About 70% of the book are about the various campaigns and battles. All the characters - including Paks herself - remain flat and lifeless. I don't really care what happens to them. There are hints throughout the book that there is more to Paks than meets the eye but until the end it's all just hints. My favorite chapter was the one about Cal and the Honeycat towards the end. There is next to no character development. The settings lacks detail. The antagonist remains a faceless evil man whose motivations and personality never play a role.
The story starts out with much potential but I am not willing to try to read the sequel after having lost interest around page 200 of the first book.
If I wanted soldiers and war, battles and campaigns I'd read Malazan again.
Just as the title says, this is the story of a sheepfarmer's daughter. Paks, not wanting to marry, runs away to become a soldier. Even though I enjoyed the book, some parts were tedious. There are a lot of details about marching, training, and battling. If you are looking for light, fluffy fantasy, this isn't the book for you. It's military in a fantasy setting.
After a promising prologue geared me up for a rousing adventure, I was massively disappointed by how dull this book ultimately was. It was the worst kind of dull, in fact, given that it wasn't due to nothing happening, but rather to how the events that did happen were related.
In short: the prose of this novel has all the spirit and passion of a grocery list. And to go along with that the main character, Paks, is painfully flat and uninteresting. She's a naive (nearly to the point of stupidity) and also honorable farm girl with a ridiculously black-and-white view of the world who becomes a soldier to fight for good and great glory and all that, and that's it. She never does a single thing to transcend that very basic character premise. Which wouldn't be as problematic if there was any examination of said premise at all.
As …
After a promising prologue geared me up for a rousing adventure, I was massively disappointed by how dull this book ultimately was. It was the worst kind of dull, in fact, given that it wasn't due to nothing happening, but rather to how the events that did happen were related.
In short: the prose of this novel has all the spirit and passion of a grocery list. And to go along with that the main character, Paks, is painfully flat and uninteresting. She's a naive (nearly to the point of stupidity) and also honorable farm girl with a ridiculously black-and-white view of the world who becomes a soldier to fight for good and great glory and all that, and that's it. She never does a single thing to transcend that very basic character premise. Which wouldn't be as problematic if there was any examination of said premise at all.
As it is, Paks seems to be entirely incapable of any sort of complexity of thought or feeling. Most times she seems almost like a disinterested observer, dully bringing us an accounting of every mundane detail (EVERY SINGLE MUNDANE DETAIL) of these three years of her life. And on the rare occasions when she does start to think or feel something of any depth, another character pretty immediately explains her feelings to her and she gets over it and goes right back to how far the troops walked on this day and the next day and what they ate and how long they slept and on and on ad infinitum. That or she asks some stupid question so that another character can give us a geography or history lesson for a few pages.
I would give the book credit for being a fantasy novel with a female protagonist and having absolutely no romance storyline outside of a few passing mentions that a friend of hers would be up for a roll in the hay if she was (which she declares that she is not and never will be with anyone). I WOULD, but given the defects of Paks's characterization already outlined, her asexuality starts to seem more like a result of her complete lack of depth of emotion than any kind of statement or subversion. And, really, based on the blatant foreshadowing in this book about Paks becoming a paladin, if I were to read the sequels (which I have no intention of doing), I worry that I would eventually begin to feel that it was actually in the service of some ridiculous Virginal (and thus ~~pure~~) Instrument of the Divine trope.
In conclusion: snooooore.
