Review: The deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon

[erratio]

The Deed of Paksenarrion is a trilogy that tells the story of a girl who runs away from home to avoid having to marry a pigfarmer, joins a mercenary company and eventually is chosen by the gods to be a paladin and do noteworthy paladin things. I read the books years ago and even back then something bothered me about them that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Now that I've reread them I think I have a better idea of just what it was about them that made me squirm.

In the first book, Paks distinguishes herself in the mercenary company by being enthusiastic and good-natured, but not by much else (other than that stuff seems to happen to her, but more on that later). She's an exceptionally good soldier in the sense that she's obedient and doesn't seem to like thinking for herself, to the point of completely missing her friends point when he warns her that just because you like someone doesn't mean they're necessarily a good person. Despite not actually being that different to the majority of her fellow soldiers, all the supporting characters have a tendency to stand around having conversations about how awesome and promising she is, and to go to great lengths to protect her from the results of her own naivete. Also, stuff keeps happening to her in a way that makes it obvious that the gods also think that she's really awesome and promising. However she's too unwilling to think for herself to actually listen to their call, going so far as to stop wearing a certain gods' holy symbol that her friend gave her because it seems to keep helping her out. Her blind loyalty leads her to want to be just an ordinary soldier instead.

Paks joins the mercenaries with typical childhood dreams of becoming a great hero with a fancy horse and a shiny sword one day. And through the second book it's this dream that spurs her on to half the things she does. At one point she allows herself to be convinced to explore an old and dangerous ruin because of her dreams of glory, and ends up defeating a great evil down there. Good for her huh? At another point she's offered the chance to become a paladin candidate, from where she'll hopefully get the blessings of their god, and again she accepts not because she wants to only fight morally, as she says elsewhere, but because when they ask all she can see in her head is the mental image of the fancy horse and shiny sword. Nowhere do we see any real evidence of paladinish conduct except in her generally pleasant personality and discomfort with fighting morally dubious battles. And still all the supporting characters stand around and have conversations about how awesome she is, when it seems like she isn't really any better than the others, only that stuff keeps happening to her. Also in the second book: Paks goes from being distrustful of a particular god at the end of the first book into calling on him, with no obvious reason for the change. She doesn't even come to trust the god until halfway through, and yet she goes around saying 'holy Gird' this and 'in the name of Gird' that.

The third book sees Paks finally becoming a paladin. In this book she suddenly and without any visible reason gains the ability to make her own moral decisions. Shortly after this she comes into her paladinish powers and becomes a paragon of all that is good, complete with slightly nausea-inducing morality lessons to her followers about how they should act. And everyone fawns on her and shower her with praise for being so awesome. I actually enjoyed this book the most out of the trilogy because while Paks becomes a bit holier-than-thou as a paladin, it's a simple enough heroic fantasy about how the great paladin performed great deeds and overcame great evil. This was in contrast to the cognitive dissonance before between Paks-who-everyone-says-is-awesome and Paks-who-acts-like-a-naive-child-half-the-time-and-only-succeeds-because-the-gods-keep-helping-her

One other thing I dislike not so much about this story in particular, but about the whole world Elizabeth Moon made is her portrayal of paladins. While in paladin training, Paks is told that although paladins can't marry (because devotion to good and god has to come first), they're allowed to have lovers in the capital. And yet every paladin whose story gets told never seems to suffer so much as a single pang of physical attraction. The other paladins she tells the story of are also rather naive and simplistic in their world view. The message seems to be that the chief requirements for paladinhood are 1) Childish worldview and lack of academic intelligence, 2) Complete and utter lack of hormones

Comments

[zola.livejournal.com]

I just reread the book several months ago, funny you should mention it.

I wasn't thrilled with it the first time I read it, either, but when I re-read it ten years later, I found there had been many things I had missed the first time, subtleties that at that time I just didn't grasp. I found it a much better read the second time (of course, that's just me, YMMV).

You might find this Wikipedia article interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deed_of_Paksenarrion), it talks a bit about how the book got written and why.

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Interesting read. While I was trying to work out what annoyed me about Paks I actually kept thinking that she *is* one of those paladin caricatures that players love so much. Sure, she's a lot friendlier than your average fire-and-brimstone paladin but she has the same lack of moral depth. The lack that attracts players to paladins in the first place since playing a paladin means almost never having to make difficult decisions, especially moral ones.
My issue is that I can sort of understand paladins having a certain lack of moral depth, since their morals are literally handed down from their gods. But it seems like a potential paladin shouldn't be able to get away with that lack of thought, and that someone who refuses (and actively avoids having) to think for themselves would make a good soldier and nothing else.

[lotusvine.livejournal.com]

My friend Sandra absolutely loves this book, so I borrowed it from her. Essentially, I found the overall arc of Paks' life a bit disjointed. The narrative goes from gritty soldiering, to D&D quest adventure, to sparkly, paladin adventures. The tonal shift doesn't feel like it's a consistent portrayal of the same character progressing through a narrative arc. But I thought the 'descension' story arc (was that the second book, where she gets cursed and can't fight anymore?) went well. I also remember thinking at the end that I would have rather read Paks-as-Paladin for a lot longer, as the dreary soldiering didn't interest me all that much. And there was that incongruous divine intervention when the gods restore Paks' hair back to her; as the representative of the gods must look their best. If you didn't enjoy the gritty soldier stuff, I'd stay away from the prequel book - was it Legacy of Gird? as it was just lots of that, concentrated. It's not that I don't enjoy grittiness; but this was a bit dreary. I think Moon's space opera books are a better bet.

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Yeh, as usual you described my exact feelings about the books a lot more eloquently that I managed :) That disjointness was half my gripe, the way that she seems to have these huge character shifts from book to book with no plausible reason for the changes. The soldier stuff neither bothers me nor thrills me, they're just mildly interesting bits to get through until the good stuff comes through. I get the impression that Moon has military experience and writes that in a lot?

I've read the prequels too (back when I was in high school and had no social life, so I systematically read most of the books in my mother's impressive fantasy collection). The Gird one feels looooong, but the others about Luap and the first two paladins were more interesting, albeit with elements that bothered me at the time. And Luap is a much more interesting character in general because he falls closer to the Evil side of the D&D spectrum than the Good. Or possibly he's an example of good intentions gone awry, I can't remember. Either way he's a change from Paks and Gird.