Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six: The Deed of Paksenarrion

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon is actually a trilogy, but the stories are so closely linked (and were published in one volume, in this case) that I'll speak of them as one unit.  This story is in the high fantasy tradition, a tradition with which I'm not very familiar.  It's not one of my favorite genres, though I found this book to me mostly interesting enough to keep me reading its more than one thousand pages.  (This is not an enterprise for the faint of heart!)  It is a story of wars, of battles, of soldiers and knights and armies, and parts of it I found almost too gruesome to bear, though as readers of this blog might know, I have fairly little taste for that sort of thing.  Still, I found the overall plot and, more important, the character of the story's heroine compelling enough to keep me reading this book.  I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who doesn't want to make a big time commitment to reading a long tale of high fantasy, but if that's what you want, then, with my limited knowledge of what else is on the high fantasy market, I would guess that this is as good as anything.