Link: The Deed of PaksenarrionOverall: 6/10Book: 8/10This is one of the all-time great fantasy series in the Tolkien'esque tradition. It is less epic in scope than some; at stake is not the fate of the world, merely the welfare of realms and, treated as being just as important, individuals. I see this as a positive aspect, since it makes the tale more realistic and gritty, and the morality less black-and-white.
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The first book tells of how the eponymous protagonist, Paks(enarrion), runs away from her Sheepfarmer father to join a mercenary company. It chronicles her training, her interactions with fellow soldiers and superiors, and her first, fairly mundane but satisfyingly action-packed, campaign season.
Once the characters and settings are adequately established, the pace steps up considerably. Half of Paks' company is treacherously attacked and slaughtered, the other half survives - not least due to her heroism - and swears vengeance. To accomplish this goal, the company's commander is forced to make some unsavoury alliances. These, combined with superior skill and dogged determination, lead to eventual triumph.
The second book begins with Paks finding herself increasingly unwilling to participate in the type of mercenary work their new allies demand in return. She decides to leave the mercenaries and try her hand at adventuring. Almost immediately, this leads to encounters with supernatural entities, good and evil both. This is the weakest part of the tale for me. Paks seems to tumble from one stereotypical adventure into the next, and gets out of the worst of scrapes with nothing more than minor injuries. This may be due to sheer luck or divine protection; either way, suspension of disbelief, which has been beautifully built up and maintained throughout the first book, wears rather thin here.
Eventually, a knightly order takes notice of her and she is invited to join their training cadre, which is usually restricted to the nobility. Even better, she is selected not only for Paladin candidacy, a childhood dream of hers, but also offered the chance to accompany one of the most prestigeous expeditions of the age. And then... the weakest part of the series leads right into the strongest, from one chapter to the next. Paks' luck runs out, she is captured by dark forces, tortured, and forced to perform as a gladiator. When she is rescued and nursed back to health, she begins to display ever-increasing amounts of irritability and quick temper. Her mentors determine than her mind has been invaded, and is in the process of being corrupted, by an evil influence. In a lucid moment, Paks recognizes the danger she is in and agrees to undergo a form of magical brain-surgery. This successfully roots out the evil, but leaves her broken. She, who was always fit and bold, is suddenly weak, clumsy, and afraid of everything and everyone. Though freely offered support by the training college, she is unwilling to remain in an environment in which everything reminds her of what she used to be and have, and believes to have lost for good.
She spends a miserable winter as a vagrant, rarely having enough to eat or a warm place to sleep in, constantly subjected to the little cruelties which ordinary people are so ready to bestow on those whom they perceive as different and weak. These passages are masterfully written, and really set this series apart from ordinary fantasy fare. The book ends with her narrowly escaping being raped, and beginning to seriously contemplate suicide. I'm really glad I didn't read this when it was originally published, having to wait for a year for the final part to come out would have been nothing short of heart-breaking.
The third book brings Paks back to a village she knows from her earlier travels, and she takes (initially unwilling) refuge with a druid-type priest. Little by little, he nurses her back to physical health and convinces her that psychological healing may be possible. She finally agrees to let him try, and regains some of what she believed lost. During the next few months, which she spends among elven rangers, almost all of her old skill and joy return. And she even begins to exhibit some of the pseudo-magical abilities associated with full-fledged Paladins, something unheard of without completion of the formal course of training which she was forced to abandon earlier. The rest of the novel recounts the progress of her first quest, a solid and enjoyable but not exceptional piece of fantasy writing, involving a minor mystery and featuring the return of many characters introduced earlier in the series.
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Narration: 5/10Van Dyck has a pleasant enough voice, but doesn't really manage to infuse the story with life, for the most part. The narrative voice is especially flat; the character voices are better, but very few really stand out. However, she does improve with time, possibly as she gets more emotionally invested in the tale herself. The final book is certainly quite a bit better than the first, and some of the character voices (particularly the male ones, surprisingly) attain a certain depth (figuratively speaking), after all. Some of the choices of accent are somewhat questionable (a squire from a geographically Southern kingdom has a distinct US-Southern drawl, of all things), but it's probably more a matter of taste than an objective weakness, and in any case not jarring enough to take one out of the narrative.
