Elizabeth Moon Palladin's Legacy series

[Vaughn]

The first book I found pretty engaging and I'll certainly read the rest of the series but at book 4 of 5, I'd give the series a B. Structurally, they're more similar to GoT than most series I've read in that the books hop around from one perspective to another, often leaving a character thread on a bit of a cliffhanger. Also like GoT, there are perhaps 2-3 too many plot threads but interesting world building. There are perhaps less distinct story arcs being wrapped up to mark the end of each book - it really reads like one very long book issued in 5 chunks. 

 

 

[Wilbur]

Elizabeth Moon seems to give her characters, particularly her female characters, a lot of agency within the story, and she is a writer whose style is flowing and easy to read.  This is simply and overtly true in the Deed of Paksenarrion and Legend of Gird books, and becomes more subtle and sophisticated in her Paladin's Legacy novels.  Her science fiction books also show this refinement in approach and style, from the Familias Regnant series where Bertie Wooster's aunts own and operate the story, to the Vatta's War novels of greater complexity.

If you start to stall within her earlier works, be encouraged that her later stuff shows her maturing skills and rewards attention.

She also provides about the most accurate and complete view of military life of anyone who isn't Glen Cook, without necessarily glamorizing it or glorifying war, even though the plots of her stories often contain war.  Wounds and illness are particularly well done IMHO.

Her work might seem tightly focused on the broad themes of traditional conflicts of high fantasy or space opera, but a second reading shows that she is thinking and causing the reader to consider how cultures and peoples can come together and reintegrate during or after a struggle for supremacy or territory, and she does a tremendous job of illustrating how compassion and compromise are the ideals of a real hero.

Moon also has a truly excellent touch in dealing with the struggle of personal loneliness as demonstrated fully in both Remnant Population with an aging protagonist and in The Speed of Dark with an autistic protagonist.  For me, her sensitivity and creativity in addressing people who are on the margins is second only to Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End.  I strongly recommend all three of these works.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah too bad she’s a racist.