Song of the Lioness Quartet #1: Alanna

This is a good introduction to Alanna and Tortall, setting up things that will play out fully in later books. The setting is a swords and sorcery fantasy (occasionally both in the same fight) in a vaguely medieval kingdom which various neighbors and internal factions. It also establishes the Bazhir and their complicated relationship with Tortall (partially absorbed through treaties and alliances with individual tribes, but not conquered), with the book's finale set in the desert.

Given that the Bazhir are loosely based on real desert-dwelling peoples (something which becomes abundantly clear in later books), it seems like a not-great thing for their prophecy to involve being saved by two people who come in from outside and fight a great evil which they either couldn't defeat or never tried to stop. Alanna (and probably Jon as well) is learning about the Bazhir for the very first time on the same trip where she and Jon combat this evil. It plays into a long history of white-savior stories in an uncomfortable way.

I first read this when I was Alanna’s age, and I’ve read it dozens of times since then.  Alanna trades places with her twin brother, Thom, so that he can study magic and she can become a knight. In order to pull off the switch, Alanna disguises herself as a boy, and finds herself bonding with a slightly older group of boys who become squires while she’s still a page. She also faces a bully who torments her in her first year, having to figure out the difference between being good at combat and being a bully.

One thing I appreciate about this book is its chapter containing something which was sorely needed in the late 1980’s when this came out and which is still useful today: a brief and useful description of what a menstrual cycle is and how to care for one’s body when it happens. Because Alanna becomes a page at age 10, and only her manservant knows she’s a girl and not the boy she’s pretending to be, when she gets her period she doesn’t know why it’s happening and has to secretly get help to find out what’s going on. It’s handled quickly and with enough detail that someone who needs this information would at least have a starting point. I don’t like how Alanna’s protests about disliking her body’s trajectory are waived away as being what the Gods ordained, but it fits this story in which the Gods are very real, and one Goddess in particular seems to be taking an interest in Alanna. 

This is a great start to the series while being a complete story in its own right, covering Alanna's first year of her life as Alan the page. 

This book is a large chunk of my childhood. I have probably read it dozens of times at this point, and I love it every time.

Most of that is the characters. Alanna is fun to read about. She is stubborn and has a temper like nobody's business, but she knows what she wants and she goes for it. Women aren't allowed to be knights, so she finds a way around that. She is not good at some of the things necessary for her knighthood and so she works her ass off at them. She gets her ass kicked regularly by a bully and she doesn't give up and go home, she doesn't go and tattle, she doesn't even ask her friends, who would be more than willing to step in and who are all significantly larger than she is, for help in actually fighting him. She learns what she needs to learn and she handles it herself. Her stubbornness gets her into some serious trouble sometimes, but it makes it easy to root for her and to like her.

Several of the side characters are kind of thinly drawn, though that is more due to the size of the book than to a lack of world-building, I feel, given they all end up fleshed out significantly throughout the course of the series.

Those that are more clearly drawn, however, are great. George and Jon are both good friends for Alanna to have as well as interesting fellows (and, admittedly, long-standing childhood book crushes of mine) in their own right. George in particular is apparently a lot tougher than he seems in his interactions with his friends. Her friend and teacher Myles provides the much-needed occasional dose of "guys, you know this knighthood thing is crazy, right?" Duke Roger adds just enough questionable menace to be intriguing.

If you are interested in the Tortall universe, this is the place to start. It is a quick, easy read and it gives you a good taste of the universe and introduces quite a few of the characters that populate later novels in this world.