Sunday, September 7

Sheepfarmer's Daughter - Elizabeth Moon

Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir told her father she didn't want to marry but he promised a dowry to a the family of a neighbouring farmer nonetheless. Determined to do more with her life, the seventeen-year-old instead packs a bag and heads 30 miles over the hill to a militia recruiting camp. Her cousin, a soldier, had told her to be selective about which outfit she joined, and the Dike's party has a reputation of fairness and good treatment. Through her journey from green recruit to respected team leader, Paks learns about integrity, herself, and the art of war.
I've thoroughly enjoyed several of Moon's stand-alone titles and her short series, so I had high hopes for the first in the Deed of Paksenarrion series. It was by no means bad, and in parts involving, but I failed to engage with the novel in any deep or interesting way. The characters were relatively superficial (Paks, for example, gives no thought in the book, which spans at least two years, to her family back home, except for her determination to repay the dowry price to her father). Characters are introduced then killed, without significantly affecting her, and without moving the plot forward (unless this strategy is part of a sub-text on the unacknowledged loses soldiers experience every day); the sole exception to this is the first death, of a dear friend, but it's dealt with and we move on. Even the deaths of two companions who, together with Paks, endure extreme conditions during an urgent quest, have no resonance. I found the fight scenes unexpected, chaotic (in the sense of being poorly described rather than accurately reflecting the chaos of battle) and random - I'd be meandering along and suddenly we're in the middle of a skirmish and then... it's over and we're back to meandering.
Moon has included a variety of supernatural creatures (elves, gnomes and trolls= and magic healers, but this isn't integrated into the plot or explored in even a cursory way, making their introduction as random as the fight scenes. Perhaps later installments draw on these elements more heavily, but at 506 pages I think there was room for some context in the introductory book.
Worst of all is the fact that there was no real world building and, in retrospect, that may be from where all my dissatisfaction stems. I never got a sense of how the world came to be, how the disparate parts fitted together, why there was so much fighting and lawlessness, what all the fighting was about, the geography (making all the sections where characters go from A to B even more pointless)... all the things that more accomplished writers and/or polished novels in the genre manages to seamlessly weave into the text. Less accomplished authors even lumpenly chunk this kind of information about the place in big, unwieldy info dumps, but at least the reader has a context in which to place the action of the novel.
I didn't realise until writing this review how gaping a hole this left, but now I've identified it I have to say that this novel was less than the fine-for-what-it-is rating I initially gave, and is downgraded to an eh. - Alex

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