The Deed of Paksenarrion
Jul. 27th, 2010 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI just finished reading an omnibus edition of Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold.
I spent most of 1200 pages wondering why I was going to finish it.
It started well, with a woman deciding to ignore her abusive father and run away to be a warrior. And the back of the book promises she'll succeed big. But that first choice is the only choice I noticed her making for... actually, possibly 1200 pages. No, wait, she chose between two different religious centres to walk into somewhere in the middle. But mostly it was about her doing what she was told, following orders, following a bunch of different people, and eventually levelling up to following gods. There came a point where the book is giving us a page or so recap on her character, and it kicks off with 'self willed'. I realised the author had utterly failed to write the character she thought she was writing. Paksenarrion is very, very short on making actual choices. She's also pretty much empty of wanting things. It's not just that she's not greedy, she just sort of hangs around and has stuff happen to her, with sword fights. She doesn't want to protect the innocent... okay, actually, she does want that, but she doesn't want it in that way that starts out with wanting it and goes through making a plan to do it and eventually ends up with doing it. She wants to protect the innocent, but just follow follow follows a lot. I was so bored. And her lack of want includes lack of curiousity. Sometimes she overhears stuff, but she doesn't want to know what it means, or have any emotional reaction to the vast majority of it, she doesn't put herself where she can hear things or actually ask questions, she doesn't want to get to know people. She just stands next to them. It flattens everybody out. Also, by the end of the giant book, everything ties up so neatly it's ridiculous. She never overhears a conversation that doesn't turn out to be Hugely Important. It makes her world sort of flat too.
Also the bad guys don't do things because they want a thing like power or a throne or more money or anything like that. They do bad things because they're Evil and worship Evil Gods. The intricate plots aren't political intrigue, they're made by the god of intricate plots, who does plots because that's what she does. As motivation goes it is somewhat unsatisfying.
The whole thing reads like a D&D campaign, but with only one player and some very flat NPCs. If you know who they worship that's all that you'll get by way of a character for them. There's only one character per god botherer apparently.
The whole first book is about her training to be a private. she follows orders a lot. and then some more. and sometimes she gets injured. and once there's an attempted rape of her that she gets blamed for and paraded about naked for.
The second book is about her training to be a knight. she follows orders a lot. and sometimes she gets injured. she accepts she's in the wrong about things pretty much all the time even when she isn't. there's a whole bunch of torture and imprisonment. She gets injured and can't fight any more and calls herself a coward. there's an attempted rape of her that she gets blamed for and thrown out half naked in the snow for. And that's how the book ends, which if I was reading them in seperate covers I'd think was purely betrayal of the reader, because that wasn't the story I was looking for when I wanted to read about a knight fighting evil.
The third book is about her actually secretly having been a paladin all along, and of more gods than anyone else, and you can tell how holy she is because there's lots of torture and a lot of rape and she doesn't actually mind and she's just sorry for people hurting her. Which, you know, respectable religious position, but did I want to read that much detailed description of torture? No I did not. I want to read about stopping evil. I guess by this point I should have been able to guess what I was getting though.
Also there's the 'coward' thing and the definitions of courage and stuff. In the second book she gets captured, tortured, set to do gladiator fight for her life stuff, drugged, all that bad stuff. She ends up a bit angry and short tempered and stuff, so her knight tutors decide she's evil and needs the evil cut out of her. She agrees. Because she's like that. The fault is always her. So they do this magic cutting thing and she ends up unable to control her body at all initially, and after a slow recovery, she's got problems with fainting in the face of danger and also freezing and also being afraid. Everybody, her included, calls this being a coward. And in a mock medieval setting I have to agree that's the framework they'd be working from. But she's been effectively brain injured, plus some completely reasonable PTSD, and every character agrees the appropriate word is coward? Even if the book keeps comparing it to having your arms cut off, in that both fighters can no longer fight, Paksenarrion still says coward. Even if she forgives herself for it. And forgives the knights for doing it to her, because she still believes they were right. So it's quite a lot annoying. Coward is a bad word, the book agrees with that all the time, so it's not the right word for injuries. Coward should only apply when someone is able to make a different choice. But not here.
Eventually she gets cured and it turns out to be part of her saintliness that she was a coward and got over it. Blah.
Oh, also it had an evil lesbian. Just sort of randomly in there at the end. It might not have meant she was evil because she was a lesbian, because her lover wasn't evil, but still, evil lesbian torturer.
And the good girl was a blonde who didn't do sex, when the bad girl was described with all those dark and black words that only probably don't mean skin color but really don't help.
I think the only thing I liked in this book was the bit about not getting angry or hating, having compassion instead, and that being Good. That was a good bit. It just lead to a lot of torture scenes and stuff that was Not.
So add to all that the fact the book was heavy enough it was damn uncomfortable to hold, and... urgh.
Book was from 1988. Book was a first book. Book has First Book stamped all over it, as well as By A Gamer.
Luckily everything else I have read by this writer was a whole lot better. LOTS better. If I had read this first I would have thrown it on the to sell pile and not bothered. But having read all the later SF stuff I'll happily buy her newer work again.
PS: In the interests of fairness, I have been insomniac this week, have been trying to sort out a timesheet with my employee, and have a headache, so I am not in my most charitable and positive mood towards life in general, let alone very heavy books. It might be better than I currently think. I did read the whole of it.
I spent most of 1200 pages wondering why I was going to finish it.
It started well, with a woman deciding to ignore her abusive father and run away to be a warrior. And the back of the book promises she'll succeed big. But that first choice is the only choice I noticed her making for... actually, possibly 1200 pages. No, wait, she chose between two different religious centres to walk into somewhere in the middle. But mostly it was about her doing what she was told, following orders, following a bunch of different people, and eventually levelling up to following gods. There came a point where the book is giving us a page or so recap on her character, and it kicks off with 'self willed'. I realised the author had utterly failed to write the character she thought she was writing. Paksenarrion is very, very short on making actual choices. She's also pretty much empty of wanting things. It's not just that she's not greedy, she just sort of hangs around and has stuff happen to her, with sword fights. She doesn't want to protect the innocent... okay, actually, she does want that, but she doesn't want it in that way that starts out with wanting it and goes through making a plan to do it and eventually ends up with doing it. She wants to protect the innocent, but just follow follow follows a lot. I was so bored. And her lack of want includes lack of curiousity. Sometimes she overhears stuff, but she doesn't want to know what it means, or have any emotional reaction to the vast majority of it, she doesn't put herself where she can hear things or actually ask questions, she doesn't want to get to know people. She just stands next to them. It flattens everybody out. Also, by the end of the giant book, everything ties up so neatly it's ridiculous. She never overhears a conversation that doesn't turn out to be Hugely Important. It makes her world sort of flat too.
Also the bad guys don't do things because they want a thing like power or a throne or more money or anything like that. They do bad things because they're Evil and worship Evil Gods. The intricate plots aren't political intrigue, they're made by the god of intricate plots, who does plots because that's what she does. As motivation goes it is somewhat unsatisfying.
The whole thing reads like a D&D campaign, but with only one player and some very flat NPCs. If you know who they worship that's all that you'll get by way of a character for them. There's only one character per god botherer apparently.
The whole first book is about her training to be a private. she follows orders a lot. and then some more. and sometimes she gets injured. and once there's an attempted rape of her that she gets blamed for and paraded about naked for.
The second book is about her training to be a knight. she follows orders a lot. and sometimes she gets injured. she accepts she's in the wrong about things pretty much all the time even when she isn't. there's a whole bunch of torture and imprisonment. She gets injured and can't fight any more and calls herself a coward. there's an attempted rape of her that she gets blamed for and thrown out half naked in the snow for. And that's how the book ends, which if I was reading them in seperate covers I'd think was purely betrayal of the reader, because that wasn't the story I was looking for when I wanted to read about a knight fighting evil.
The third book is about her actually secretly having been a paladin all along, and of more gods than anyone else, and you can tell how holy she is because there's lots of torture and a lot of rape and she doesn't actually mind and she's just sorry for people hurting her. Which, you know, respectable religious position, but did I want to read that much detailed description of torture? No I did not. I want to read about stopping evil. I guess by this point I should have been able to guess what I was getting though.
Also there's the 'coward' thing and the definitions of courage and stuff. In the second book she gets captured, tortured, set to do gladiator fight for her life stuff, drugged, all that bad stuff. She ends up a bit angry and short tempered and stuff, so her knight tutors decide she's evil and needs the evil cut out of her. She agrees. Because she's like that. The fault is always her. So they do this magic cutting thing and she ends up unable to control her body at all initially, and after a slow recovery, she's got problems with fainting in the face of danger and also freezing and also being afraid. Everybody, her included, calls this being a coward. And in a mock medieval setting I have to agree that's the framework they'd be working from. But she's been effectively brain injured, plus some completely reasonable PTSD, and every character agrees the appropriate word is coward? Even if the book keeps comparing it to having your arms cut off, in that both fighters can no longer fight, Paksenarrion still says coward. Even if she forgives herself for it. And forgives the knights for doing it to her, because she still believes they were right. So it's quite a lot annoying. Coward is a bad word, the book agrees with that all the time, so it's not the right word for injuries. Coward should only apply when someone is able to make a different choice. But not here.
Eventually she gets cured and it turns out to be part of her saintliness that she was a coward and got over it. Blah.
Oh, also it had an evil lesbian. Just sort of randomly in there at the end. It might not have meant she was evil because she was a lesbian, because her lover wasn't evil, but still, evil lesbian torturer.
And the good girl was a blonde who didn't do sex, when the bad girl was described with all those dark and black words that only probably don't mean skin color but really don't help.
I think the only thing I liked in this book was the bit about not getting angry or hating, having compassion instead, and that being Good. That was a good bit. It just lead to a lot of torture scenes and stuff that was Not.
So add to all that the fact the book was heavy enough it was damn uncomfortable to hold, and... urgh.
Book was from 1988. Book was a first book. Book has First Book stamped all over it, as well as By A Gamer.
Luckily everything else I have read by this writer was a whole lot better. LOTS better. If I had read this first I would have thrown it on the to sell pile and not bothered. But having read all the later SF stuff I'll happily buy her newer work again.
PS: In the interests of fairness, I have been insomniac this week, have been trying to sort out a timesheet with my employee, and have a headache, so I am not in my most charitable and positive mood towards life in general, let alone very heavy books. It might be better than I currently think. I did read the whole of it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 01:56 pm (UTC)It's interesting how often this happens with women characters, even when the author is also a woman. It says volumes about how little we really understand women's agency - we're so unused to seeing it that we don't even notice its absence and don't know how to write it even when we know we want to.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 02:19 pm (UTC)