First Test

Kel is the first girl to train as a page in living memory who is known as a girl during her training. Alanna’s previous example is wielded against her, as it’s assumed by unhappy sexists that Alanna only made it through with help. This provides narrative opportunities for challenges that Alanna didn’t face, or at least new angles on familiar topics (such as bullying). Kel feels older than ten, not enough to be jarring, but enough that I had to keep remembering how young she is. She's handling a lot of stress very well, partly because of coping mechanisms she learned while living in an unfamiliar country with her parents.

Nealan is Kel's sponsor and quickly becomes her friend. Gradually she gets more of a social circle, but it's difficult to be the only girl surrounded by boys when many of the adults in charge are also treating her gender as somewhere between an annoyance and an issue. The plot focuses on Kel's first year as a page, specifically the fact of her probation and the bullying amongst the pages. She also has a fear of heights, something which one of her instructors makes her work to mitigate.

This is technically not a sequel, but it’s set in Tortall one year after the conclusion of the Immortals Quartet. It's notable for sneaking in a bit of Daine and Numair while Daine is barely under eighteen and Numair is thirty or so. Jonathan is king and the land is filled with the immortals who remain, of which Spidrens are a constant danger for even wary travelers. Raoul leads the King's Own, and Alanna has been ordered to stay away from Kel, lest her involvement taint the public perception of Kel's success or failure.

The worldbuilding is continued from the previous quartets, rarely pausing to explain things which were given more thorough treatment earlier. This has the effect of subtly updating continuing readers on what previously-met characters are up to now, while keeping the main focus on Keladry’s current problems. The one place this was a bit jarring is there are a lot of  changes from Alanna’s time as a page, and the characters often not-so-subtly comment on them. Kel obviously doesn’t have Alanna’s experiences in her head, but she knows what her brothers said of their time in the palace and (conveniently) most of the notable changes stem from sometime after their tenure.

Prior Tortall books have mentioned the Yamani Islands, but this is main introduction to any specifics about them. Kel’s parents were the Tortallan ambassadors to the Yamanis, and when FIRST TEST begins, Kel had spent more of her life there than in Tortall. Most of the details about the Islands seem meant to invoke real-world Western ideas of East Asia (specifically but not only Japan). This shows up in bowing styles, lucky/waving cats, clothing, and (most notably) outward impassiveness and control of emotions. 

I've read this many times before as a teenager, but it's been a while, and I was surprised by how much of the plot is Kel dealing with bullying in various ways. 

<blockquote>"You aren't a bit romantic, are you?" he asked, amused.<br/><br/>    She sat back and stared at him. She was beginning to think that Neal required a keeper. He seemed to have the craziest ideas. "Romance? Isn't that love-stuff?" she asked finally.<br/><br/>    "It's more than just love. It's color, and--and fire. You don't want things magnificent and filled with--with grandeur," he said, trying to make her understand. "You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent passion."<br/><br/>    "I just want to be a knight," Kel retorted, putting her used tableware on her tray. "Eat your vegetables. They're good for you." </blockquote><br/><br/>I never quite took to Kel the way I took to pretty much any of Tamora Pierce's other heroines, and I think this pretty much sums up why. I don't care about her not having an interest in romance as in boy-girl love stuff (she's a child at this point, and hey, Alanna was super freaked out about the idea for an awfully long time), but her lack of romanticism about <i>anything</i> is very off-putting to me. She has no fire in her, and it makes it hard for me to get attached to her. Even characters I detest are often at least interesting because they have some fire in them.<br/><br/>The plot is intriguing and Tortall itself is always wonderful to visit, but even giving Kel some weaknesses and a fear of heights never quite makes her interesting in the same way other Pierce characters are. I want her to succeed, but only because for her not to would be unfair and because it would cause danger to some of the secondary characters. The "I like it" rating is pretty much exclusively plot-based and because I love Tortall. Were I in the habit of giving half stars (and that is just a can of worms I am not yet ready to open because the binding of the universe might fall apart and also I would have to re-rate <i>everything</i>), I might give it a two and a half instead of a three.<br/><br/>I'm going to go through the rest of the series because although this was my first Tamora Pierce book, it is the only series of hers I have not re-read ever and I am interested in reading everything in order and seeing how it all plays out. I'm not precisely looking forward to it, which is a bit depressing, but I feel like it deserves another chance. Maybe I will find something in it, or in Kel, that will allow it to finally "click" with me. At any rate, it is followed by probably my favorite Tamora Pierce series, and I will finally remember and understand all the little nuggets of information about the characters from this book that I always end up scratching my head about.

My word of warning: I'm probably far from Tamora Pierce's intended audience for these books set in the Tortall universe. I read the Alanna quartet a long time ago and rather enjoyed them. Pierce has obviously spend a long time researching medieval combat and society and it shows in her writing. I liked the characters from the Alanna quartet, so when I saw Immortals and Protector of the Small series on the shelves focusing on different characters, it didn't entice me enough to pick them up.

First Test starts off 10 years after the Alanna quartet and right after the Immortals quartet. I skipped over Immortals, and was startled to see how much Pierce had evolved her world. I'm going to wait on finishing this series until I get through the four Immortals books.

First Test stars Kel, the first female to wish to train as a knight since it was available. Where Alanna disguised as a boy to complete the training, avoiding the hazing and prejudices that come with it, Kel deals with it head on. The retelling of this journey from pre-page to knight with this twist evokes more sympathy and respect for Kel as a character. She is a little too one-dimensional in this first installment, but I think there is enough room to grow.

The first in this series is terribly short (I was able to easily cruise through it in a few hours) and I feel it short changes a lot of character development. However, the last three in the series are much longer and I have higher hopes for these.

Bottom line, if you read the Alanna quartet and enjoyed it, it's probably worth settling down with Immortals and Protector of the Small.