Summary: Quite well written, dungeons and dragons style romp/coming of age hero story. Female protaganist and nice dialogue kept me in it till the end.

Things I liked:

Bodycount: Author wasn't afraid to introduce a character then kill them pretty soon after without much song and dance. This kept the book gritty and real for me.

Lots of little adventures: Rather than one big epic quest write from the start with the fate of the world on the line. The action was built and constructed using lots of little adventures (more like a harry potter style). This made it a fun read with lots of little payoffs along the way.

Things I thought could be improved: A lot of the source material seems to be very 'in the style of dungeons and dragons'. I read that the author was somewhat inspired by a bad RPG session she overheard once, but I think it would have been more immersive if she'd strayed from the material a little further. In particular a lot of the magic is explained like rules out of gamebook rather than the more organic pattern of other sci-fi fantasy.

Highlight: Paks on the run as a coward was a great theme. That and times when it was 'Paks against the world' were my favorite bits for sure. When she was allied up with others it got a bit boring (realtively speaking). ( )

An epic that merges the three books of Paks's adventure into a seamless story. The heroine truly demonstrates strength in adversity, kindness in evil, and courage in fear. Does not disappoint, though be aware the series does contain graphic themes. ( )

I'm so glad I had the whole set. The first book is a bit of a slow burn, but together this is fantastic, and different from the classic fantasy, not just because of the female primary character. So glad i came across this series. ( )

I've never seen such a disjointed trilogy

The first book is military fantasy for people who don't like military fantasy? There is way to much guts and torture to be YA, but the protagonist all the good guys are so disturbingly blandly flawless that it feels kinda juvenile and happy-go-lucky? Nobody ever questions anything. Nobody ever does anything selfish or lazy or corrupt or hasty. Nobody ever has misunderstandings. Oh, and it starts of with troperiffically stereotypical 'running away from home' and 'attempted rape of the female protagonist' scenes. (don't worry, everyone but the rapist is super-duper sympathetic and right-thinking and goody goody and everything turns out hunky-dory because they're all so gosh-darned wholesome.) Honestly, this book is kind of terrible. It's probably possible to skip it with only minor confusion.

The second book Is like someone's disjointed D&D campaign? We actually have some character development of both the protagonist and some NPCs, which is new. The protagonist has some original thoughts, which are also new. And things are interspersed with a few trips into what I can only call 'dungeons' which I can't put quite into words what feels so disjointed about them, other than that they are obviously made according to rules published in a handbook from the 70s. This book has it's flaws, but is OK overall.

The third book does some real delving into the true meaning of 'good' and self and what it means to be brave. It's definitely still drawing on the D&D idea of a paladin, but it's doing some real work on how that might play out. We've also got a compelling plot for once, going on a quest and accomplishing things. Plot is predictable and side charactes and pretty one-dimensional, but ti's pretty decent if you like heroic fantasy. ( )

I stopped at 705 pages, or about two-thirds of the way through the second book (Divided Allegiance) in this omnibus.

I quite enjoyed the first book (Sheepfarmer's Daughter). It was somewhat strange, and in that difference from the ordinary there was something very interesting and engaging about it; it was an intricately detailed and resolutely everyday detailing of the training and campaigning of a mercenary company (say, correlating to roughly the sort of period Machiavelli observed) through the eyes of one of the new recruits. In its ruthless minutiae it was fascinating. In any sort of sense of ongoing story driven by the tale of the obvious heroine, it was flabberghasting. But as a story of the honour and action of the company and her place in it as a cog - a special cog, but a cog nonetheless - it was really something interesting and different.

And then we got to the second book, and our heroine immediately leaves the company (for good reason, admittedly), and adventures across the wilderness with a half-elf magician who takes her into some ruins to find treasure and experience points forces of evil.

Er... what?

I thought perhaps this was an aberration, because then the book seems to settle into "what shall our heroine do with her solo career?" and I thought maybe we'd see some development, but then lo, there was more questing into ruins, in a small party this time, which fortunately contained a character who'd picked up the find traps and disable traps skills. (Don't you hate when you try and quest ruins without them?) In short, no, the second book was basically a sequence of D&D storylines that the GM was stringing together for the development of our heroine's character sheet. It was only a matter of time until I hit my saturation point, because that is absolutely not something I'm interested in reading. (Playing, yes. Reading about someone else's gaming session? Tedious.)

And so I'd give Sheepfarmer's Daughter a qualified three-and-a-half stars, and the rest of it two-and-a-half, because there's not really anything wrong with it, if sword-and-sorcery (or should I say paladinning) are your sort of thing. ( )