I am super excited to be starting Tamora Pierce’s third Tortall series, Protector of the Small, and not just because The Immortals Quartet makes me a little queasy. Protector of the Small starts a year after the events at the end of The Realms of the Gods and ten years after our beloved King J passed a proclamation saying girls can train to be knights. Finally someone takes up that challenge! Keladry, or Kel as she is called, faces a lot of the same challenges as Alanna did in her training, although without having to pretend to be a boy. In a lot of ways, this is worse, since she faces constant prejudice and unfair treatment both from her peers and some of her teachers. Though Kel looks up to Alanna, she’s very clearly Alanna’s opposite. Where Alanna has a temper, Kel strives to constantly “be as stone” and not let her emotions show. Her biggest pet peeve is anyone picking on someone smaller–hence “Protector of the Small”–and then she doesn’t hesitate to stoically kick some ass. Possibly because I’m more like my homegirl Alanna, it took me awhile to warm up to Kel, but I think by the end of Book 1 we are now BFFs. Middle School Patricia was less forgiving. Plus, by the time she read First Test, it was 8th grade, she was older, wiser, and had largely moved on to longer though not necessarily better literature. In consequence, I hardly remember anything about the two Kel books I know I did read, besides being constantly annoyed that nobody stepped in to make things more fair. Stupid boys.
In this first book, Lord Wyldon, the stodgy guy in charge of pages, insists that Kel serve a “probationary” year even though no boys have to, supposedly because he wants any excuse to send her home. Kel is pretty pissed at this, and the many other, injustices she finds waiting for her at the palace, but she grew up in Ancient Japan the Yamani Islands, where she was taught that to show emotion is to show weakness so she just shuts up and deals. Unlike Alanna, she has to earn most of her friends, since almost all the other pages hate her on sight. You know, because boys suck. Where Alanna feared cold most of all, Kel fears heights (future plot point, I’m sure). Kel is also the first main character in a Tamora Pierce series that doesn’t have some kind of magic, which Middle School Patricia thought was pretty boring, but I think is pretty cool.
The Checklist
Animal Companion(s): Peachblossom (bitchy horse), Crown and her flock (sparrows)
Magical Bling: None yet, but she does have some lucky cat charms
Love Interest(s): None yet, she’s only 10!
Song the Lioness/Immortals character sightings: King J and Healer Baird’s sons are both pages and Kel’s friends; Daine and Numair each make a brief appearance; Sir Myles, Lindhall, and Tkaa the Basilisk are all teachers; Sir Raoul shows up at the end to kick some spidren ass. Alanna is pouting somewhere else because everyone wants her to stay away from Kel.
The Play-by-Play
Chapter one: Decisions
Lord Wyldon doesn’t want to let a girl page in, but King J makes him. Alanna has to stay away because people will say Kel helped her cheat her way through. Kel wants to say no because probation is so totally not fair, then she is attacked by a spidren in the forest and realizes she needs any training she can get. If they send her home after a year, “I’ll still know more than I do now”(17).
Chapter two: Not so Welcome
Kel’s room is wrecked by mean boys her first day so the head servant gets her a special lock. Older pages have to sponsor younger pages and no one wants to sponsor Kel, I assume because they fear her raw girl power. Finally Neal of Queenscove, son of Duke Baird the chief healer, is all “Whatevs, I’ll do it.” He’s 15, not 10, because he started late after dropping out of healer college. He also sasses the teachers pretty much always. Read the rest of this entry »