This is the second part of the ‘Deed of Paksenarrion’ trilogy. The first
part told how Paks left her home to avoid a forced marriage, joining
the local Duke’s private army and discovering they were mercenaries.
There was a lot of detail about army life, with numerous skirmishes and
battles, and Paks made many friends and attracted the attention even of
the Duke himself with her fearless fighting and loyalty. I enjoyed it
very much and looked forward to more of the same. And within a chapter,
this book has veered sharply off in a different direction altogether.
Not
liking the Duke’s support for the violent methods of a
pirate-turned-nobleman, Paks leaves the army and sets off over the
mountains for home, accompanied only by what must be the world’s most
devious elf. No longer are we following the realistic lifestyle of the
mercenary troop, we’re into full-on fantasy quest mode, with a
succession of threats to be defeated and magic everywhere. Magic beasts,
magic rings, spells conveniently summoned to get out of trouble. Here’s
a mysterious underground place, obviously full of evil, but Paks has a
‘feeling’ that someone is calling for help. Which way to go? Another
strange feeling tells them. How shall we get rid of the evil spirit? I
know, let’s use this magic scroll - no idea at all what it does but - oh
look, it worked. Now, I have no problem with the principle of magic (I
read fantasy, after all, it comes with the territory), but it shouldn’t
be a universal get-out-of-jail-free card for all occasions.
Fortunately,
the whole book isn’t like this, and soon Paks is back on more prosaic
turf. The real difference between this and the first book is that she is
essentially alone, cut off from the familiarity and support of the
company. Paks is in many ways the perfect soldier - tough and hard
working, willing to follow orders but without losing her innate sense of
right and wrong. Her weakness comes from inexperience with the world,
which leads her to accept people at face value and follow along without
questioning, or even thinking much about the consequences. This is fine
within the structure of a military outfit, but isn’t so good when she is
travelling about on her own.
This book made me uneasy. I like
Paks as a character very much. She’s the complete antithesis of the
typical fantasy hero - well, maybe being handy with a sword is quite
typical, but still... She’s self-effacing, honest and straightforward,
yet she constantly seems to bump up against people who are more
complicated, people who lie to her, or trick her, or withhold
information, or push her into things that perhaps she’s not suited to.
She’s very easily persuaded, especially when there’s an attractive
adventure in the offing. Sometimes Paks seems quite stupid in her
simple-mindedness, but that’s as much her lack of education as anything
else, plus the innocence of youth, perhaps. But still, I ached for her
to cut through the web of other people’s schemes and see her way to
something more than being pushed around.
This book feels much
choppier than the first. Even though they both have episodes of action
interspersed with slower passages, the first book had the uniformity of
always being set within Duke Phelan’s company of mercenaries. This book
hops about - the company, the journey with the elf, the village of
Brewersbridge, dealing with the robbers, training with the Girdsmen, the
journey west and so on, and none of them very well connected. They
seemed like a more or less random collection of events. Each time, there
are new characters to get to know, new circumstances to understand, new
mistakes for Paks to make. And each time there are histories to recount
and long philosophical discussions to be got through regarding the
essence of good and evil. Paks floundered a bit with these, and I
confess that I didn’t understand a lot of the points either. It might be
thought-provoking, if it wasn't analysed in exhaustive details by a
whole succession of characters. It begins to get repetitive after a
while.
The action parts are terrific, though, even if they seem a
bit dated now - all those underground passages, evil beasties and
magical this-that-and-the-others. And it does seem a little too easy,
sometimes, that Paks manages to survive all these trials. Somehow
there's always a magical gizmo or a character with convenient powers to
rescue her. And then the ending. Few books have moved me quite as much
as this one. Poor, poor Paks! Her tragedy is heartwrenching, and it’s
hard to see that she herself did anything wrong to invoke such a
terrible fate. This is a very uneven book, but, as with the first one,
the final chapters more than overcome the earlier flaws. Four stars.
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