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A review by tome15
The Paladin by C.J. Cherryh
5.0
Cherryh, C. J. The Paladin. Baen, 1988.
This book is the odd duck in my reading pond by almost any standard, and I enjoy it immensely. In fact, it is about the only story of its genre I have reread several times. It is a one-volume martial fantasy set in a world that seems like ancient China but isn’t and is rumored to have magic but doesn’t. It is a martial arts training story, a revenge story, an apprenticeships story, a woman warrior story, and a love story. We have seen all these elements before, but the characters so gradually reveal their complex individuality and prickly relationship that the drama never lets down. This is how our heroine is introduced in the prologue from the villagers’ point of view: “Emphatically, the master took no students . . . and certainly no students as ragged as this—so small and starved and so evidently some yeoman farmer’s son, no different than any of their own.” So things are not what they seem, and perhaps that is the point.
This book is the odd duck in my reading pond by almost any standard, and I enjoy it immensely. In fact, it is about the only story of its genre I have reread several times. It is a one-volume martial fantasy set in a world that seems like ancient China but isn’t and is rumored to have magic but doesn’t. It is a martial arts training story, a revenge story, an apprenticeships story, a woman warrior story, and a love story. We have seen all these elements before, but the characters so gradually reveal their complex individuality and prickly relationship that the drama never lets down. This is how our heroine is introduced in the prologue from the villagers’ point of view: “Emphatically, the master took no students . . . and certainly no students as ragged as this—so small and starved and so evidently some yeoman farmer’s son, no different than any of their own.” So things are not what they seem, and perhaps that is the point.