The lure of the Tortall heroines is not in their infinite variety nor is it in their verisimilitude. While ''Trickster's Choice'' does not wholly exploit its potential, it's unlikely that fans will mind. Aly also gets a suitor, a magical crow who assumes human form, but Aly develops more chemistry with the trickster god her divine confidence marks Aly as worthy of a supernatural partner. The trickster god sends Aly dreams that supply news of the other Tortall heroines. Instead, she relies on her time-tested material. And while luarin-raka relations sound close enough to Western history to serve as a political theater for modern conflicts or issues of race, Pierce does not develop the theme. Giving readers a leg up on Aly compromises the alacrity ascribed to her to some extent, it also slackens the narrative tension.
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Aly realizes that she has been charged with the care of the One Who Is Promised the only question left is which of two sisters the One might be.Īlanna, Daine and Kel work within the ordered structure of their kingdom Aly has to discern the rules of a foreign land for herself. But, as Aly slowly discovers for herself, the trickster god has secretly promised the raka that a scion of the old raka kings and queens will reclaim the throne.
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The Copper Isles, once inhabited only by ''raka'' (dark-skinned people), have been conquered by ''luarin'' (whites from other lands) and, over the 300 years of luarin rule, the raka have been steadily oppressed and the trickster god banished. The god's appearance will not puzzle or even startle readers, who, thanks to a preface, will know more about the trickster's plans than Aly does.
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She keeps a preternaturally cool head, even arranging to be disfigured in order to ward off slave buyers looking for a ''bed warmer.'' She has unswerving faith in her abilities, even before the trickster god of the Copper Isles shows up to tap her for a pivotal role in the kingdom's embattled history. Aly sails off on her boat, only to be unceremoniously captured by pirates and sold into slavery in the far-off Copper Isles.ĭoes Aly gnash her teeth, or even weep? No - she looks at her enslavement as an opportunity to prove her talents as a field agent. Aly has to achieve distance from her mother (and father) and to grapple with the examples they have set.īut Pierce quickly collapses the mother-daughter tensions and casts Aly as even more of a superheroine (or ''shero,'' in the parlance of the dedicated followers of the Web site Pierce maintains with Meg Cabot, author of such pro-feminist fantasies as ''The Princess Diaries'') than her counterparts. With ''Trickster's Choice,'' it is Alanna's 16-year-old daughter, Aly, who generates the action, and suddenly Alanna is a problem, a critical mother who wishes Aly would make something of herself, while vetoing her well-founded desire to become a spy like her father. Instead, she chooses an unconventional husband and keeps her career as king's champion, the best knight in the land. But Alanna's love life takes second place to her stirring performances on heroic quests and on the battlefield, and she declines to become a queen. Disguising herself as a boy, she earns her knight's shield, and Pierce eventually lets her have a romance (and sex) with the handsome crown prince. Like so many leading characters in children's books, Alanna is liberated from the tyrannies of family life, with her mother long dead and her father distant.įirst met at 10, Alanna easily figures out a way to switch roles with her twin brother: he wants to go to the convent to learn sorcery, and she wants his place at court, to train for knighthood. Alanna, subject of the first cycle, ''The Song of the Lioness Quartet,'' typifies the model.
Trickster choice series#
To date, Pierce's novels have come in ''quartets,'' or series of four three linked quartets have followed three girl warriors in the land of Tortall (two other quartets, set in a different world, are for slightly younger readers). They know their way around dragons and shape-shifters, jousts and to-the-death battles, and they are relative strangers to anxieties about their looks, status and power. Her characters are not literary cousins to Harry Potter (whom they precede, having first appeared in 1983) but a more particular type, featured also in the works of Robin McKinley and others: the girl warrior.
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Enormously popular, Pierce is a best-selling and prolific author of girls' fantasy novels, loved for her strong female heroines and quasi-medieval magical realms. IF you have not heard of Tamora Pierce, chances are that you do not have a preadolescent girl in your life.