This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

AKA The Deed of Paksenarrion book 1.

So far I'm enjoying this a lot. It's a "farmer's daughter runs away to join the army" story. Feudal structure, muscle-powered army. By page 99, she's late in her training, no combat yet, no idea where the story is really going.

So I guess I'd say parts of it are excellent. I like Paks as the young, naive, ignorant hick who's smart as a whip and learning really quickly. I like the description of being in that army. On the other hand, the main villian is introduced about a third of the way through and then defeated far too easily, and there are some speed bumps in the writing, I remember especially when we suddenly get one chapter from the point of view of a character that we never saw before and will never see again, telling us mostly stuff we already learned in the previous chapter.

My informant tells me that it might not be really necessary to read the rest of the series.