Alanna: The First Adventure

I am always on the lookout for books that I think my thirteen-year-old daughter might like. She's a reluctant reader, at best. (I think it's symptomatic of a society where kids have all the video-on-demand they want.) So, when a thread on a fantasy novel board I visit started talking about Tamora Pierce's “Alanna” series, I thought I'd check it out. Now, given that's it's written for 11-15 year olds, the prose isn't quite what I was used to for fantasy novels, but it was on par with John Flanagan's stuff in the “Ranger's Apprentice” series. After I got past that, and the intro chapter that set up the rest of the story much too quickly, it was a highly enjoyable romp with an ultimate Mary Sue.

I understand fully why people bag on Mary Sues. I get it. As much as writers try to make complex, deep characters, Mary Sue-ing them tends to happen. There could even be made an arugment that Mark Lawrence's dark and gritty Jorg Ancrath is something of a Mary Sue. Alanna of Trebond is a girl who wants to be a knight. Her twin brother wants to be a sorcerer. Using a highly implausible tactic, they switch places when their father sends them to training schools, and Alanna (using the identity of her brother, Alan) becomes a page and begins training to be a knight.

Pierce guides us through the first three years of Alanna's ordeals of being a page and having to hide her identity. She is the smallest and weakest of the boys in the school, but she grits her teeth and puts in the extra work to become formidable in her own right. She has to deal with a bully. She has to contend with a teach who is clearly a bad guy in disguise, and she has to deal with becoming a woman, as well.

The book was worth the read, and I clearly understood how a young girl reading this could find a hero to emulate and aspire to be. For that, it has incredible value. I've already begun reading the second book in the series. I need to see Alanna achieve her goal.