Deeds was a trilogy written in the 80s by Elizabeth Moon. She recently wasted it by writing five sequels... Anyway, Deeds follows Paksenarrion as she leaves the farm to become a mercenary. She trains, goes to war, leaves her company to get knight training and then becomes a paladin. It's got dungeon exploration, evil clerics and more - feels very DnD inspired, don't know if it is. One of the things I liked, paladins are selected by the church, not the gods. Except Paks, who does it the old way.
80s fantasy ftw. I find myself totally drawn to cover art evocative of 80s style fantasy even though i know it's not in vogue right now.
Totally agree. I am a great frequenter of second hand bookshops and fairly close to me, just over the border on the Welsh side lies Haye on Wye, which is a sleepy little town with the remains of small castle, a load of late mediaeval houses and not a lot more. However, and this is the point of this ramble, once a year it hosts the Haye Literary festival, which has a world wide rep. The town was able to attract this event due to the fact that it has more bookshops than virtually anywhere else and they're all secondhand. Imagine then if you will, standing in a largish room, walls crammed with shelves, stacked to busting with SF&F, all ages, all genres, sorted only by author and this is just one shop..............the streets are lined with bookshelves screwed onto walls, covered with plastic sheeting to keep off the rain ( for christ's sake, it's Wales, therefore it's raining), loaded with old paperbacks at 20P a go. I go there fully intending to be out in an hour and I'm still there while they're trying to shut up around me!
Bookshelves hanging from the walls outdoors... if you throw in whatever the equivalent of Welsh hotdogs and festival "street meat" are that sounds like a party. My favorite book covers were the Dragon Lance novels, featuring all the main characters for the fully developed series. For a kid like me when I was 12-16 having a visual guide to the characters was awesome. The first 3 "Dragons of" design covers have a lot of stuff going on that are common with comic books: bodyparts & weapons poking out of panel, transitioning color gardients between panels, different color texts & different fonts... No clue if that was common for 80s & 90s book covers, because most of them that I saw were on library book shelves or hidden from me between the front & back covers of other books because I wasn't spending my money on some unknown author! I'm not sure that I haven't read this before... I remember a really "gritty" mercenary story that followed a female character at least some of the times that involved all sorts of building roads, making forts, and marching. Felt like I was reading a military survival guide, but without hilarious pictures of skinning rabbits. I might have only had access to the first book and never followed up when all the dungeon adventures and paladin stuff went down... unless that all goes down in the first book in which case I'm thinking of another late 80s early 90s female mercenary story. Lots of History majors and Medieval scholars that don't waste their talent by becoming Newt Gingriches, though he got money out of it so what do I know. One of the LitRPG stories on my list featured city management and characters in a sort of pestilience riddled fantasy world where everyone drank alcohol as part of their diet to kill bacteria or something, based on true to life events I guess.
Wanted to take a look at the book cover to see if it sparked any memories, looks really damn familiar but the wiki synopsis didn't help at all. On a side note, googling farmer's daughter in an image search has a very different result from sheepfarmer's daughter. "Cow Girl" "Farm Girl" and "Farmer's Daughter" are apparently interchangeable.
This is one of my all time favorite trilogies. Loved it. I don't want to spoil it, so haven't read any of the sequels.
@Matthew James the first book is all mercenary stuff, training, marching, guarding a fort, sieges and battles. Very little magic, glimpsed at a distance sort of thing. Pretty gritty. Book two kicks it up into a DnD type adventure.
There is a part in this YT video where he's cleaning a fish that reminds me of your rabbit picture. Not that he's dunking the fish between his legs, but that it's an inside out simple procedure. Forgive me for the thread drift.
Guys camping trip looks like my yard without lawn chairs lmao. Butter & bagels are legit trail food, but the only fish I eat is tuna, so a 30 pound pack for three days would be on the light side. Live near the PCT and have hiked some of the Appalachain trail, and the freaks of nature out there with 30 pound bags and no tents who put down 15-20 miles a day in mountainous terrain with plenty of time to spare for cooking / cleaning and partying have always made me jealous of their goat genetics. On the plus side once you've got the necessities a pack with food in it only ever gets lighter, on the downside you are running out of food and bear proof / mouse proof / water proof are rarely as advertised. On topic I think I've for sure read the first book of this series...
