If you loved how Paks went from raw recruit under Sergeant Stammel’s brutal drills to a trusted veteran in Duke Phelan’s company, you’ll click with the Captain and his mercenary band here. The Red Knight revels in roster sheets, pay ledgers, billets, disciplined formations, and siege logistics—the same nuts-and-bolts texture that made campaign life in The Deed of Paksenarrion feel real. As with Paks’s contracts and musters across Tsaia and beyond, every decision has rank, duty, and pay implications—and the action hits hard when steel meets sorcery.

Paks ran from home to chase a life with the sword, earning her place step by step—drills, patrols, and brutal marches—before answering Gird’s higher call. In Alanna: The First Adventure, you’ll get that same spine of transformation: secret lessons, weapons practice, aching muscles, and the courage to face duels and dark magic. If Paks’s early days in the barracks and on campaign hooked you, Alanna’s climb toward knighthood will feel like coming home.

If Paks’s level-headed courage—holding the line with Duke Phelan’s veterans, navigating Brewersbridge with the kuakgan’s counsel, and standing firm against Achrya’s minions—won you over, Rowan’s clear-eyed resolve will too. The Steerswoman follows a fiercely capable woman who relies on discipline, inquiry, and grit to face dangers and unravel mysteries. It has that same feeling of an honorable path walked step by careful step, where choices matter and strength is measured in deeds.

Paks’s journey from soldier to paladin—truth-sense, healing, oaths to Gird, and the price of resisting dark powers—echoes in Ista’s path. In Paladin of Souls, divine intervention isn’t flashy; it’s a burden that forces hard choices about justice, mercy, and when to draw steel. If moments like Paks refusing corruption in Achrya’s hands and later submitting to sanctification moved you, you’ll relish how Ista wrestles with gods’ designs and learns what it truly means to bear sacred authority.

Paks marched from town to town, from Phelan’s contracts to holy quests, crossing borders and battling iynisin and worse as her destiny unfolded. The Way of Kings opens that same sense of vastness—warfronts, ancient orders, and oaths that bind stronger than steel. If Paks’s road from the barracks to paladin trials thrilled you, watching characters like Kaladin and Shallan shoulder impossible burdens and grow into their vows will scratch that epic itch.