Book Title: Alanna: The First Adventure
Author: Tamora Pierce
Series: Song of the Lioness #1
Date Started: June 11th 2020
Date Completed: July 13th 2020
Genres: Fantasy, Adventure
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Star
Final Rating: Four Stars
Review:
I know the Song of the Lioness is a beloved book for a lot of people, and I understand why. It took a little while to get going, I feel, but once it found it's feet I really enjoyed this book. And I'm always up for the girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy trope, especially when it's in a fantasy knight setting.
Alanna's is a familiar story, but one with its own spark. Reading it, I couldn't help being reminded of Earthsea, Trudi Canavan, Sabriel or Patrick Rothfuss (i.e. all of my favourite childhood fantasies, and some newer ones too). I wish I'd read this as a kid, it would've been groundbreaking. As it is, I've read a lot of books like this before, though I appreciate many of them were probably influenced by Pierce or at least the somewhat-underrated wave of feminist fantasy she was a part of in the 80s/90s.
The one thing that was very well executed was the portrayal of friendships and comradery. It reminded me that these unlikely friends and their relationships are always at the heart of epic fantasies, often even more so than the setting and magic systems. It's something that I wonder is sometimes forgotten in favour of pushing a strong, independent protagonist to the reader's attention - when actually having a circle of ragtag heroes and jesters around them is one of the reasons they become so powerful.
This book is actually really short, so I'm struggling for much more to say about it. I imagine you could follow each book immediately on to create a more meaty fantasy that we're slightly more used to these days, but I do like the way we get these little episodes of Alanna's life (it's very Earthsea).
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