Paksenarrion
At WisCon last weekend, they announced that the guests of honor for next year will be Nisi Shawl and Elizabeth Moon.
I've read some of Nisi's work (and plan to read more), but I am embarrassed to admit that I've read only one of Moon's books.
Moments after the GoH announcement, everyone around me started saying, “The Deed of Paksenarrion is such a great book!”
My only association with the book (or trilogy, in its original form) is Cat F's lovely song “Fair Were the Towers." A night or two after WisCon, I was listening to iTunes while doing magazine administrative stuff, and the song came on, and it seemed like some sort of a hint from the Universe that perhaps I ought to finally read the book.
But now I see that in its combined one-volume form, it's over a thousand pages long.
Which is usually just too long for me. I am, sadly, a relatively slow reader; it would take me weeks, or longer, to get through a book that long.
I'll probably read it anyway. I think the only other fantasy novel that I've heard this consistently positive things about over this many years was Tigana, and when I finally read that, it became one of my favorite books.
But I'm in the middle of half a dozen other books at the moment, and I wince at how long it's going to take me to get through everything.
It helps that Baen provides the first twenty chapters for free online. I'll probably start with that.
(Wrote this a couple days ago, forgot to post it.)
