{"id":37,"date":"2001-09-18T18:52:21","date_gmt":"2001-09-18T22:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=37"},"modified":"2001-09-18T18:52:21","modified_gmt":"2001-09-18T22:52:21","slug":"pierce_tamora_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2001\/09\/pierce_tamora_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierce, Tamora: (109-111) First Test; Page; Squire"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Re-read Tamora Pierce’s First Test<\/cite>, Page<\/cite>, and Squire<\/cite><\/strong>, the first three books in the awkwardly-but-accurately named Protector of the Small<\/cite> quartet. (Lady Knight<\/cite> will be out next year.) I read Squire<\/cite> when it came out this summer (suckered into buying it in hardcover by Ms. Pierce’s displaying the beautiful cover<\/a> at Boskone<\/a>; tricky, that), but my plan to re-read them in sequence was foiled when I cleverly managed to bury the first somewhere in summer storage.<\/p>\n

These are set in a different world from her Circle<\/cite> books<\/a>, and pitched at a slightly older level. Ten years after the proclamation that girls could be trained as knights, the first has finally stepped forth. (Alanna of Trebond, now King’s Champion, disguised herself as a boy to win her knight’s shield; see the The Song of the Lioness<\/cite> quartet, Pierce’s first books.) Keladry of Mindelan is ten when she enters training, big for her age, entirely unromantic (in the shining-armor sense, not the Cupid sense), quiet, stubborn, and possessed of a fierce hatred for bullies. (She also has no magic or close personal relationships with deities whatsoever. This is refreshing.) She is forced into a probationary year by the training master, a stiff conservative; this is the topic of the first book. Page<\/cite> deals with the rest of her time as a page, while Squire<\/cite> covers the last four years of her training before she is knighted.<\/p>\n

I like Kel a lot, and the company she keeps is enjoyable as well. (A couple of her more casual friends have sufficiently small parts that I can never remember who they are, but this is probably inherent in the school setting and the limited word count available to young adult novels.) The stories are a good mix of adventures and interesting training bits; I haven’t the faintest desire to joust, or weave, or do fancy woodwork, or any of the other things that I read about in novels, but I always find it rather soothing. (Occasionally this leads to a slightly episodic feel, because there isn’t a specific overall plot arc like Alanna’s enmity for Roger of Conté.) I’m not sure that these break a lot of new ground, but I like the sensible and realistic tone they bring to the sub-genre, and enjoy them a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-read Tamora Pierce’s First Test, Page, and Squire, the first three books in the awkwardly-but-accurately named Protector of the Small quartet. (Lady Knight will be out next year.) I read Squire when it came out this summer (suckered into buying it in hardcover by Ms. Pierce’s displaying the beautiful cover at Boskone; tricky, that), but … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pierce, Tamora: (109-111) First Test; Page; Squire”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15,26],"tags":[347],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","category-tortall","tag-pierce-tamora"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}