"Sheepfarmer's Daughter"

Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Elizabeth Moon)

This book is not what I expected. After looking at the cover (yeah, don't judge it, I know) and reading the back cover, I thought I had a enjoyable slice of 80's fantasy cheese here. And at first, that's what it is - Moon kicks the story off admirably quickly, as our heroine flees her arranged marriage and joins the military in like three no-bs pages. Then follows our heroine's military training, which is more interesting than it has any right to be, and then we get a fifty page medieval fantasy rape trial. (This is where you should drop in the record-scratching sound effect that was mandatory in movie trailers for several years.). I counted, and the rape trial and assorted drama starts on page 33, and was not over when I hit page 83, at which point I gave up. Fifty pages of this was far too much to hold my attention. I found myself wondering who this material was meant to appeal to, and discovered that whoever it is, it isn't me.

Grade: D+