One High Fantasy

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon My good friend first loaned me this trilogy to keep me company while recovering from surgery five years ago. It’s still one of my favorites. It’s really high fantasy, but the reader is drawn gently into both the world and the depth of the plot. In the beginning of the first book, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, our heroine runs away from home to join a mercenary company with a good reputation. The action is absorbing and feels like a realistic portrayal of life with a mercenary company. It’s only gradually that we find out – with the naïve Paks - that this world has magic, and the standard elves, dwarves and orcs. In the second, and most difficult book, Divided Allegiance Paks leaves the Duke’s company for training with the religious Knights of Gird, a powerful saint, eventually falling afoul of some evil minor gods. In the final volume, Oath of Gold, Paks comes triumphantly into her own as a major force for good both spiritually and politically. OK, I admit that her final political triumph seems a little tacked on, but the threads of her growth are for the most part woven in securely from the very beginning. You can read this either as three separate books or bound together. But, if you like fantasy, this is a fine one. And if you’re willing to make the commitment to the 900 pages, it’s a good place to start with fantasy, with a compelling major character, detailed but not too fussy world, and a more gender-balanced world than Lord of the Rings (though I love that, too.) For me, I wondered how it is that I, a mostly-pacifist mama, can identify so strongly with a single, career soldier like Paksenarrion, as I was absorbed in her story while nursing my baby. Ah, the incongruities of life.

And a question for my readers: I’m going to do another set of booktalks for the teens. This time the topic is Classics and Award Winners, an area in which I’ve read considerably less than fantasy and sci-fi. So, do you have any suggestions of classics not more than about 200 pages in length and interesting to young teens?