The Song of the Lioness Series

The Song of the Lioness Series
Tamora Pierce, 1983-88

Premise: Four YA books about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight.

This is awkward, because these books were a staple of many of my contemporaries' childhoods. But not of mine. 

I have read, and enjoyed, later books by Tamora Pierce, so I had this series on my shelf, snapped up some time ago at 0.50 cents a book. But I'd never read it.

Until now. 

These books are not, largely, bad books. They are fine, even good books burdened with bad/painful/awkward/dated parts. 

My quick reactions:

Alanna: The First Adventure (1983)

This is fun. Some of the character introductions are clunky or weird, but it's easy to overlook. The characters are mostly fun, the structure of the story works. The gender-bending is fairly well done, although there's a bit much of "she'll always be a girl" for today's audience. It's fine if she's a girl despite pretending for specific reasons to be a boy. It's also fine if she's not a girl, but this was the 80s so there's quite a bit of gender essentiallism from most characters. 

And then there's a HARD left turn into white savior tropes at the end that had me physically recoiling from the book. Eesh.

In the Hand of the Goddess (1984)

Overall better. Mystery and adventure elements, the characters continue to grow and change. Fine example of 80s YA fantasy.

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986)

Oh dear. Alanna is super special enough to bring feminism to the "desert tribes". Yikes. It has some decent battle scenes. Alanna learns that some other women don't suck, which doesn't really match her experiences the earlier books. Continues/changes the romantic plot - I basically hated the romance in every one of these books. Overall, it means so well, and it fails so, so badly.

Lioness Rampant (1988)

We search for a famous MacGuffin that no one mentioned before, meet exactly the characters that are needed to resolve everyone's plots happily, and close with a big battle. It's fine, even good at times, but I was pretty tired of Alanna and her magic psychic cat at this point. 

The bottom line is, I didn't hate these books, but I can't imagine handing them to my own daughter over either something written more recently or something I have personal nostalgia for. So back to Goodwill they go to find another home. 

2-3 Stars Okay to Good Books