Tamora Pierce is a lover of strong female role models and most of her books are aimed towards young women ages 8 - 16. This series is a perfectly wholesome series, age recommendation is a loose thing. If you have a junior younger than 8 who churns through books, then by all means get them to read some of Pierces work. Though there are plenty of fighting scenes and wars so it may also appeal to young men out there too. So Steemians! If you enjoy some light reading or have some young adults and would like to give some wholesome reading, this is for you.

First Test

This book is based just on or over a decade after the end of the Lioness series and one year after the end of the immortals series. It is the tale of the first noble girl to try for knighthood openly since Alanna the Lioness became one pretending to be a boy.

We start with a sit down between King Jonathan, Alanna the Lioness and Lord Wyldon, the training master of Pages who come to Corus with the intent of becoming knights. Lord Wyldon is a traditionalist who does not believe it is not a womans place to fight, however he had accepted the role of training master knowing that the law had changed since Alanna and that legally girls could try for their shields. He just never expected a noble family to allow their girls to even consider it, and he had been right for the better half of a decade.

Lord Wyldon agrees to take the girl on provided two circumstances are met. First, the girls first year would be a probationary year. If she couldn't keep up with the boys then she'd be let go. The second requirement was that Lady Alanna the Lioness was to have nothing to with her. After all she had shown zero interest in other pages. This would also remove any argument that Alanna helped magic the girl into winning her shield. Alanna gets pissed off and rides into the sunset so to speak.

Then we are introduced to Kel or Keladry of Mindelan. Her family had spent the last 6 years in the Yamani Islands and they had helped pave the way for a peace treaty through a marriage alliance between the two royal families of Tortall and Yamani. The Yamani islands strikes me as a bit like ancient Japan. They wear slippers and kimonos and have houses made of Wood with paper walls etc. I am unsure if this is also like ancient Japan but in the Yamani Islands, expressing emotions is considered rude or uncouth, the equivalent of picking your nose at the dinner table.

Even with her Yamani training Kel is hard pushed to not show anger at being informed that she will be put on probation when no boys ever were. She almost refuses to go out of shear pride until she faces a spidren with no means of being able to stop it. Then she decides that even if she is only there for a year, she'll at least have one year of training and knowledge.

There is an event in Keladrys past that has majorly shaped her as a character. When she was young, her older brother had held her out over a tower balcony. This has caused Keladry to have a crippling phobia of heights. It has also caused her to hate bullies and have a soft spot for the down-trodden. This trait earns her some interesting allies, human and otherwise. One such ally is Peachblossom, a small destrier strawberry roan paint horse who was abused by his last rider. A nastier, crankier, more bothersome horse you'll never find, and you love him, he is so wonderful.

Thoughts

This book is about sticking to your beliefs. It's about honor, hard work, perseverance, emotional control and understanding consequences and being ok with dealing with them when making ones decision to act. It's a wonderfully inspirational series for young adults and a good book for parents to give their kids to encourage them to build character.

The book itself is well paced and decently descriptive. Pierce definitely has a knack with words and is able to put a lot of description into a few short sentences. The only thing that irks me but is of my own making is that I own two books with one type of cover art and two books with a different kind of cover art. I apologise to you others that are probably as equally irked by this as me.

Finale

For young adults I give this 9.6/10. For adult readers I give this a 7.9/10. It's definitely aimed at a younger audience but it is still an engaging read for any fantasy buff. It is a bit of a training montage but this is the story of a girl training to be a knight. If the book were anything but a bit of a montage then they wouldn't be telling the story right.