Most recently: Jaya caught up with My Friend Flicka.
When my friend gave me her copies of The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce, it came with a lot of hype. I was promised strong women and interesting takes on relationships and decently respectful treatment of what is basically Middle Eastern culture, especially since it was written in the 80s. I was promised quick but enjoyable reads, and when I opened to the first page I found this:
I didn’t pick up the book for about a week, because of that. I was too nervous. I have a longstanding ambivalence toward high-fantasy. I know that sentence will make many of you close this tab and I’m sorry, but not all of us have your strength. When I was a child, my poor mother tried her best to introduce me to the medieval-ish adventures she loved so much, like The Hobbit or the Narnia books, but I was not having it. If there were maps or battles on horseback or any sort of complicated family trees I was just bored to tears. To this day I just politely nod and change the subject every time my fiance tries to sell me on A Song of Ice and Fire. Sorry dude, it’ll never happen, give this ring to someone who cares about Star Wars.
This is all to say: I was shocked to discover I loved these books and am crying for my 11-year-old self who never got to read them.
For those who don’t know, the series is about a girl named Alanna who wants to be a knight, so she disguises herself as a boy and switches places with her twin brother. Thus he gets sent to learn how to be a wizard (God, Alanna, why don’t you want to be a wizard) and she goes off to learn knightly stuff. Based on that, I expected the book to be about three things.
1. Binding her boobs
2. Hiding her period
3. Dealing with the aftermath when, inevitably, she’s found out
Rest assured, these things do happen, but I can never get them out of my head even when they’re not happening. Sure, we see the first time she gets her period and thinks she’s been injured because no one explained it to her, but every subsequent time what, she just walks with an armful of bloody linens to the castle laundry room? And she just doesn’t…take off her clothes ever? She’s living with teenage boys! It’s just a concentrated locker room! All of this subterfuge seems a hundred times harder than learning to carry a shield or whatever. A friend has argued that the “pregnancy charm” she gets to keep her from getting pregnant would also stop her period, but I need more proof.
Alanna also has this thing called the Gift, which is basically a knack for magic. She hates it, but it’s one of those great power=great responsibility things where she has to learn to use it for good and healing, otherwise the gods will be angry. And ok, Alanna, I’ve read Harry Potter, I know that having magic can be a scary burden sometimes, but maybe forget about that for a day because you can make fire with your fucking hands. For once I just want to read a book about a wizard who spends all her time going “THIS IS THE COOLEST!”
There are a few things that struck me about this book (though with my limited knowledge of YA fantasy literature I don’t know if these are just common things). First, and I think the reason I wish I had this was when I was a kid, is she is not just a tomboy. Most books about tomboys I read were basically books with male protagonists who at some point had long hair/kept proclaiming their hatred of dresses. Alanna is a knight and a fighter, but she is still a girl. She spends what free time she has during her training with her friend George’s mom (more on George later, because SWOON), wearing dresses and learning to do womanly things, because she realizes she enjoys them as much as she enjoys doing manly things. Later, when she lives in the desert with the Bazhir, she tries to learn weaving, and is relieved to be able to actually live as a woman.
I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming there are many, many girls out there for whom this was the case. Girls who liked playing sports and building with LEGOs, and who also liked painting with glitter paint and having tea parties. Girls who are, you know, people with varied interests. Pierce explores how having ambition does not mean ignoring everything else that comes with life. You can carry a sword and go on adventures, and also stop to wear a dress and make tea sometimes. Being a knight is Alanna’s job and her passion, but it’s not everything about her.
The flip side to this is Pierce’s treatment of sex and relationships, which are explored realistically without them ever becoming the only plot points. Her three lovers are real characters outside of their relationships with her, their relationships develop naturally, and most people are surprisingly mature when they end. And when they end, Pierce lets Alanna cry. She doesn’t sob in bed for days, but she doesn’t bottle it in either. She reacts like a human. I’m sad that I found this so surprising.
(Sidenote: Most books I read taking place in vaguely medieval fantasy worlds are romance novels, so I kept wanting there to be full-blown sex scenes. You literally have a bodice to rip, Alanna, can we please get some details?)
Anyway, throughout the series Alanna shacks up with Jonathan, George, and Liam. However, the order of awesomeness is: George, Jon, Liam. You wanna fight about it? Okay, let’s go. First off, there’s Jon, the knight who makes Alanna his squire. Yes, he has pretty blue eyes, but he is a king who needs a queen to stay put and have babies. And then makes Alanna feel like shit when she stands up to him and says she’s not into that.
Then there’s Liam, the Shang fighter (“warriors from birth” sorta thing) Alanna meets while on her travels in the fourth book. The first description we get of Liam is of all his physical attributes, which include pockmarks and a bushy mustache, and then insisting Alanna was attracted to him. Pierce basically could have written “he looked like a giant, poorly shucked ear of corn. But you know, hot.” I just don’t get it. Are any of you out there attracted to Liam?
Alanna is obsessed the moment she finds out he’s a Shang warrior, because she wants to learn their style of fighting, and to his credit he travels with her and helps her train every morning. But he calls her “Kitten” from the get-go, which, she is a fucking Lioness so just don’t. He also is afraid of her Gift, and gives her this whole guilt trip about how using magic is cheating, when he’s the one who had eyes that change color according to his mood. He has mood eyes! Is this a deeper thing where he is also a wizard but ashamed and takes it out on Alanna? Whatever, she deserves better.
Which is how we get to George. George is perfect. The one flaw I thought he had was that for the first three books I was convinced he was about 35. He is the “King of the Thieves,” which you get to be by killing the last King of Thieves, but I kind of thought he maybe had to be an apprentice for a while or something? You know, work his way up, which takes time. But then someone corrected me and said he’s only maybe four years older than Alanna, so that’s just fine.
George is Alanna’s best friend. He teaches her to fight with knives, he makes her laugh, he watches out for her without thinking he needs to save her. He knows she needs to wander and never tries to hold her back, or makes her feel guilty about being with other men, or about her being far more powerful and famous than him. His mother teaches Alanna how to dress like a woman, but he fell in love with her when she was dressing like a man. He’s just perfect, okay?
There is a reason I gush over the relationships and character development in these books. It’s because, no matter how hard I tried, I just could not care about the action. Alanna and Jonathan defeat evil gods in the Black City and I can barely tell what’s going on. Alanna kills a powerful wizard trying to take over the throne, recovers something called the Dominion Jewel from an elemental, and then defeats the same wizard again after he is raised from the dead (thanks to her brother) and I felt like I was racing through to see the small moments when she learns to deal with her feelings.
This is my ambivalence showing through, or maybe it’s just impossible to write an interesting fight scene, or maybe I just don’t know the difference between sword-fighting moves so I always felt lost. Still, whenever I gleefully described this book to my fiance, it was always about how much of a complete character Alanna is (or how bad she is at naming things, because seriously, Faithful is a shitty name for a god-cat).
Now that my fantasy bubble has been broken, I’m starting to question myself. Should I try Tolkien again? Would I enjoy all those Redwall books my mom slipped into my bookshelf? Should I dive into my fiance’s collection of Star Wars novels? He really wants me to. Please make him stop.
Tags: alanna, attraction is mysterious, jaya catches up, jaya saxena, on grokking and not grokking high fantasy, tamora pierce, the song of the lioness, yes you should read every star wars novel and you should start with the courtship of princess leia which is frankly underrated
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TEAM GEORGE FOR LIFE
I came down to make this comment, glad to know you beat me to it. <3 U, Georg-ie!
*waves team George flags*
This particular fish….
Zod, I love George.
(ps, and slightly off-topic: I am looking for good fantasy/adventure reading material for a girl of about 10 who is reading at a 10th/11th grade level. Obviously some 10th/11th grade level books contain material not appropriate for a 10 year old. Please suggest me all the things, you people are the best.)
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but as someone who was once that child, a lot of that stuff just goes *whoosh* straight over the head if you’re not looking for it.
I was also once that child, and I understood what was happening, but I think it made me a more sex positive person? Anyway, I was reading Tamor Pierce at 10/11. Oh, and His Dark Materials OBVIOUSLY. And the aforementioned Redwall.
Yeah-I read the Alanna books when I was pretty young, but you start developing expectations of what sexual relationships should/will be like early-Alanna books aren’t graphic at all but she has sex with men who respect and care about her, handles the relationships in a really healthy way, and has a lot of fun-I think it influenced me 🙂
I was totally that child too, and that’s why I’m hoping for other people’s input–I can’t remember what books may have had questionable material in them because I just hauled right through them. Also, not my kid, so I’m tending to err on the side of caution with recommendations.
Tad Williams’ Taillchaser’s Song!
HDM does have some pretty graphic violence, but I definitely read it when it came out (I think I was about 12/13?). I read a lot of Anne McCaffrey starting around the age of 11 – there is some sex in there, but it’s not particularly graphic.
His Dark Materials also has non-graphic sex, but I remember it as being basically on par with what was featured in Song of the Lioness (i.e., age appropriate for most bright pre-teens). I kind of recall McCaffrey’s stuff as being somewhat more graphic, maybe? And also not as awesome at modeling good relationships. Which is not to say that I didn’t read giant stacks of Dragonriders at that age, because I most certainly did.
I am…trying and failing to remember the sex in HDM? Please to remind me. (I don’t doubt you, my memory is just junk.)
Near the end of book 3, is freighted with deep symbolic significance in the allegory, relates to difference between children’s and adults’ daemons. Also, there may be something separately with Mrs. Coulter, but I don’t remember for sure.
Yeah, a weird thing about being 11/12 when the first book came out is that by the time Amber Spyglass was published, I was much more ready for the subject matter… It was actually perfectly timed for that age cohort, probably. I can’t imagine reading all three at such a young age…
that’s fair. I’ve been reading a bunch of books by Malinda Lo (who was featured on here not that long ago) and I really enjoyed them. I think the Ash/Huntress books would be okay for a 10 year old, they’re pretty chaste but feature a queer main character. Adaptation/Inheritance are probably a little too old.
Seriously. I read “Clan of the Cave Bear” at 10 and honestly didn’t realize what they were talking about in the rape scene. Years later I mentioned to someone that I’d read this great kids book about cave people and was confused as to why they were shocked until I went back and re-read it.
I read the Duncton Wood series when I was ten because I’d enjoyed Watership Down, and hey, more anthropomorphic woodland animals! Then I reread the first book as an adult and was horrified at all the mole rape and murder that I had somehow missed.
J.M. Auel and V.C. Andrews taught me what sex was. I was still prepubescent when I read those, so thank goodness I got some Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey a few years after so I could learn that sex can be easy and joyful, too.
His Dark Materials (eta, Megano! beat me to it), she is the right age to really connect with Lyra and the prose is so good she won’t be bored. All the Philip Pullman, actually, Sally Lockhart is also awesome.
Yessss to His Dark Materials, though I don’t know how much her Catholic family would like that. Not gonna stop me from suggesting it anyway.
yes. 10 is the best age to start with subversive reading!
The sneaky thing is that as I remember, the allegorical aspects don’t become super-clear until the third book, so if her parents spot-check The Golden Compass, they may not notice what Pullman’s up to.
Just make sure they don’t google it.
Uh… fair point. I got nothing for that except to hope that they’re open-minded types.
Feign ignorance if they do.
“Killing God and overthrowing organized religion? No, I don’t remember any of that, no. Haven’t the faintest.”
YES SALLY LOCKHART. I adored those books.
but The Thing That Happens at the end of the second book made it so I can’t read them any more. The Thing! It is so sad.
OH MY GOD I know. I get like halfway through that book and then slam it shut like LA LA LA YOU CAN’T TELL ME THAT MORE HAPPENS AFTER THIS.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children! Very weird and very good. Definitely nothing inappropriate for a 10 year old. I think one character had a crush on a girl but very innocent. Although it’s definitely creepy so if the kiddo is easily spooked, this may not be a good pick. And I also was thinking maybe the Midnighters series or the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I read those a long time ago so don’t remember if there’s anything iffy. (Although for what it’s worth, when I was a wee kid reading above my age level and came across sexual content or something else I didn’t understand, I’d just keep reading and ignore it!)
I liked the Scott Westerfeld books when I was a young teen, although reading back now I find the Uglies series to be not as clever as I remembered. I also particularly liked his series Leviathan (cool steampunk art, girl having adventures, fantasy creatures that work like machines…) although the main character can fall into some of the traditional “tomboy” tropes that are frustrating.
I think I was about that age when I started reading the Redwall books. As I recall, there’s not too much in the way of “adult content” and although I was an ahead-of-my-grade-level reader too, I certainly wasn’t bored by them.
Sabriel series by Garth Nix, if she can handle scary stuff (essentially zombies with thoughts). The Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner (nothing bad in the first one, the subsequent ones get a little more violent. Second Philip Pullman His Dark Materials/Sally Lockhart, obvs. Anything by Diana Wynne Jones, especially Howl’s Moving Castle. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper is a classic.
Sabriel is perfect and beautiful. I’m not sure what her scare meter is like but she’s a tough kid, and that book is so good. (All his stuff, actually.)
Ohh, now that I think about it, she might be at just the right age for The Ragwitch? I remember thinking that it was pretty good but would have been great if I’d been younger.
Ooooh, yes, The Dark is Rising!
Also, now that I’m on a roll – Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain are GREAT, and definitely 10/11 appropriate.
OH YES. HOW COULD I FORGET PRYDAIN.
All of Lloyd Alexander! The Chronicles of Prydain are my favorite, but he has a lot of delightful single novels, like The Arkadians, The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian. All of them are age appropriate, but fairly sophisticated writing. When I was little I LOVED The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen (loosely based in China) and The Iron Ring (loosely based in India). If I re-read them now I might find some sketchy cultural-appropriation stuff, but nothing that immediately jumps out at me as I look back — we’re not talking Calormenes, we’re talking more like, is it appropriate for a white American writer to make criticism of caste divisions a subject of his children’s fantasy book.
His Westmark trilogy is excellent, too, but much darker and more brutal.
The Chronicles of Prydain are great, but may be a little frustratingly unchallenging for an advanced reader. Or maybe not—good stories can bridge many gaps.
Agreed, but I was one of those ‘read way above your grade level’ kids and I still loved them. I think the fact that they move fast, and have decently-well-realized characters makes up for the unchallenging aspects? Though I do remember reading ALL of them in the course of about a week, so maybe buy the box set?
And the Westmark Trilogy! And the Arkadians! and especially Vesper Holly, go read the Illyrian Adventure right now. They aren’t very hard to read, but a ten year old will like them.. I still like them.
YES SABRIEL
I was OBSESSED with Sabriel at that age. It is so good.
YES to the Diana Wynne Jones. God. Her books are all amazing, although I have to give a particular shout-out to Dogsbody. It recently unseated Howl’s Moving Castle as my favourite DWJ, and Howl occupied that spot for a good 8 years at least.
I find Dogsbody too sad to reread often!
<3 DWJ
Yes! To the dark is rising. The movie was a TRAVESTY though.
There was no movie. There has never been a movie. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
(But ten was the GOLDEN AGE of The Dark is Rising. She should definitely read it.)
Oh! Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland books! But not Valente’s other books, because they are seriously adult.
OK, these recs come from being the 10-year-old at a 10th-grade reading level, so take that with a grain of salt — I’m not sure how they’d hold up to an adult, but I loved ’em as a kid.
David Eddings’ The Belgariad and The Mallorean series – Lots of very long books that keep a child busy for a very long time. References to sex are oblique, and the content is not nightmare-causing. May not be the most progressive, there is definitely an “evil Eastern kingdom” thing going on but I didn’t notice that until I got older.
Terry Brooks’ Magic Kingdom of Landover novels. Again, safe for a kid to read and I don’t even recall blatant racism. There’s an evil but kick-ass witch who I definitely wanted to be.
I read the first few books in this series a couple of years ago, but I didn’t finish the series. I have to say that I do not enjoy the way Terry Brooks writes female characters, and writes about women. Some of the thoughts his characters have about how women are, etc. are really not something I would want my future sons and daughters to internalize. It’s not just a general feeling either, it’s specific sentences where male characters have thoughts about women in general and it really feels like Brooks just really wants to vent about it or something.
Though, in all honesty I probably would have loved the series as a 10-year-old-reading-at-a-grade-10-level too.
Robin McKinley: The Blue Sword and The Hero & the Crown
And Spindle’s End? I read that a lot when I was 11-14 and loved it, obviously. (I don’t remember the reading level but it was satisfyingly large.)
HERO AND THE CROWN FOREVER.
And Beauty!
What about Madeleine L’Engle? Start with A Wrinkle in Time, but really all of it.
YES GOOD
I was going to say that, and instead add an addendum: King in the Window is an excellent book (forgot who by) that also deals with the possibilities of multi-dimensions and things. I loooooved it as an over-achiever tween. And it’s set in FRAHNCE
I can’t believe no one has recommended Terry Pratchett. Discworld! Start with the Tiffany Aching books, then the Witches, and on to infinity.
Monstrous Regiment! Foment that little rebellion!
Tiffany Aching books forever! These are especially perfect because Tiffany herself is about 10ish in the first book, so they’re very relatable (but also written at a very high reading level- I learned new words from these books reading them as an adult).
I also feel like everybody in this thread who is not recommending the Tiffany books should also read them, since clearly if they had they would know that they are excellent.
Tiffany is the ten-year-old who reads at a tenth-grade level. She’s perfect for this.
I think The Song of the Lioness Quartet would be fine for a kid that age, unless she or her family is very uncomfortable with sex being mentioned at all. Jaya’s description of it is spot-on — it’s mainly offstage and the narrative mainly focuses on people’s (pretty realistic and not too extreme for a 10/11-year-old) emotional responses to it. The kinds of ethical decisions, risks, fears, etc. that people have to deal with also seem manageable.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and all its sequels, by Joan Aiken, came to mind right away. For me, they start to get really good when Dido Twite takes up her rightful place at the center of the story in Nightbirds on Nantucket, but the first two are good too. DIDO FOR PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is emphatically not for everybody — it’s faux-Austen in style — and there’s some intense emotional stuff in there as well (very accurate evocations of depression, some creepy deaths). In length it is best described as “a big honker”. All of that said, I love it and have read it multiple times.
I think people here have already mentioned Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons series, starring Princess Cimorene. Funny, lively, adventurous, totally appropriate in every possible way for a 10-11 year old — my sister was that age when she read them.
Somebody’s bound to come in here and mention the Dianas (Duane and Wynne Jones, respectively) — I know I’ve seen Toasties recommend them — but I add my vote to the pile (for DWJ, Dark Lord of Derkholm and its sequels might be the way to go).
These last two batches I’ve never heard anyone else even talk about, but I probably got them out of my local library 40 times — anybody else heard of them?:
The Seven Citadels books by Geraldine Harris (Prince of the Godborn, Children of the Wind, The Dead Kingdom, The Seventh Gate) are a quest story, super lush HIGH fantasy, coming of age with special powers and lots and lots of emotional and spiritual drama. Emphatically non-Bechdel-test-passing, but the women are as complicated and well-drawn as the men (which is to say, medium). The writing’s a little swoony, but I’ll take it.
Winter of Magic’s Return and Tomorrow’s Magic are a surprising, future-dystopian take on the Arthurian legend. I haven’t read these in years but I remember the main characters (2 boys, 1 girl, but no love triangle nonsense) were engaging, the writing was graceful and dryly funny, the premise was … not embarrassingly terrible, and the pacing / storytelling were great.
P.S. Your small friend is probably not ready for Tam Lin, but you could try giving it to her on her 15th or so birthday.
Seconding the Dealing With Dragons rec!
I have still not been able to finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell but need to give it a reread.
This entire comment is thoughtful and excellent, thank you.
I think JS&MN is a bit much for a ten-year-old, but VEHEMENTLY second Dealing with Dragons.
There are sequels to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase???? Must find. Must read.
There ARE, and they are amazing. They get eerier in a really original way. Black Hearts in Battersea comes next. Read ’em and report in the cocktail hour?
I will absolutely do this. Thank you!!
Thank you! I was going to log on just to recommend Patricia Wrede.
I also cannot recommend enough Meghan Whalen Turner’s “The Thief” series, which has a mythological Greek-ish setting and possibly the very best twist I’ve ever seen.
Matilda, of course.
Also, in the non-fantasy category, My Side of the Mountain; Caddie Woodlawn; The Westing Game.
I love Caddie Woodlawn but re-reading it as an adult with a critical eye there are some HELLA RACIST parts in it that make me hesitant to suggest it.
I just bought The Thief series (for me) cuz everyone here recommended it! I’m excited!
O MY GOD I AM SO EXCITED FOR YOU. I just reread the King of Attolia. Best books for anyone at any age!
I just read Winter of Magic’s Return a few years ago and really enjoyed it! (And I don’t always care for dystopian stories.) Another vote for that one.
I was just WAITING for someone to mention Dealing with Dragons. Truly the best.
Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot , which is by not just Patricia C Wrede, but also the absolutely stellar Caroline Stevermer. When this awesome little girl is done with all these books on this list, and therefore is 15 she’s going to be ready to move on to a College of Magics and Scholar of Magics and from there it’s just a thin thin line until she’s madly in love with Dorothy Sayers.
OMG I HAVE NEVER MET ANYONE ELSE WHO READ GERALDINE HARRIS. I can’t express how excited I am that you mentioned them! I LOVED them as a preteen/teen, but haven’t reread them in many many years. I’m almost a little afraid to no, for fear that they will not be as good at 30 as they were at 13. Part of me wants to preserve the rosy glow of loving them, but I’m curious too. Thank you for reminding me of them and being a person who has also read them!
Somebody mentioned Mercedes Lackey in a thread further down, and Mercedes Lackey is Very Important and 11 is the perfect age for Magical Talking Horse-Friends.
She is a perfect tiny horse-loving girl so this sounds EXCELLENT.
I loved them at that age – still read them now when I have flu or need braincandy. There is some rape and torture though, and at that age I was fine with it but as said above I think a fair bit of it went over my head because MAGICHORSEFRIENDS. (I had a white pony with blue eyes at the time.)
YES I was a weird homeschooled high-reading 11 year old and Mercedes Lackey was/is my JAM. Plus the Magic’s Price trilogy has a gay main character and he and Dirk from Weetzie Bat were some of the first gay characters I met at an early age.
Yes! She is amazing. Stealth feminist, too.
1) Tamora Pierce– particularly Alanna the Lioness books and Kel’s arc (Protector of the Small)
2) Jane Yolen wrote some really endearing books about training dragons that I was obsessed with from approximately age 8 to age 13. https://www.goodreads.com/series/42839-the-pit-dr…
3) Sabriel, by Garth Nix. And then tell her to read them again when she’s 13.
4) Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. Again, read these between ages like 8-12.
5) Dianna Wynne Jones. Wrote Howl’s Moving Castle, and also a bunch of incredible things.
6) Girl runs away to live with a dragon because being a princess was too boring for her: http://www.amazon.com/Dealing-Dragons-Enchanted-F… (this book is adorable, from what I remember, and I also remember reading quite a lot of them)
7) Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book.” I read it last year and enjoyed it, even though it’s supposedly for kids.
….this post is brought to you by Books I Remember Enjoying As a Young Wee Adventure-Wantin’ Lass
That is almost exactly how I described Dealing With Dragons when I recommended it. I also reread it last month and it holds up beautifully.
Patricia Wrede is a consistently good writer. The Sorcery & Cecilia books are awesome as well
The Pit Dragon Chronicles!!! I adored them.
Seconding the Protector of the Small quartet, especially if sex/romance is an issue. There is a relationship, but it’s even less of a focus than Alanna’s relationships in her series, if I’m remembering correctly. Kel also stays younger throughout her series–like, the first book’s time frame is one year, and the last book ends when she’s 18/19, so that might be more appealing for a younger pre-teen.
Also seconding Garth Nix’s Sabriel, the Sally Lockhart books, Watership Down, the Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper also wrote an amazing book called King of Shadows, but it has a male protagonist and almost no female characters, since it’s about an all-boys theater troupe and Shakespeare and father(-figure)-son relationships. The Boggart and its sequel are also really good, and they’re about a brother and sister). The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede) are HYSTERICAL, especially if she already likes fantasy, because the poke fun at the genre quite a bit. I think someone up-thread mentioned Heir Apparent, but I’ll mention it again.
One non-fantasy recommendation: The Mozart Season, by Virginia Euwer Wolff. The protagonist is 12, but I think it works at a higher reading level, too. It was incredibly important to me as a young violinist, but you don’t need to know anything about music to enjoy it, and it is beautiful.
OH ALSO how could I forget, everything Madeleine L’Engle. A Wrinkle in Time etc obviously, but also the Austins books. A Ring of Endless Light is super important, though those might be a little older, subject-material-wise.
Totally agree. I also LOVED “An Acceptable Time” as an older teen, but that is definitely not 10-year-old appropriate.
The Mozart Season was one of the most moving books I read, and I never even tried playing a string instrument.
I loved the Pit Dragon Chronicles as well!
Did you guys know that she wrote a fourth one a couple of years ago? I didn’t think it was as good as the other three, but I wanted to know more about Jakken and Akki!
Seconding Graveyard Book, it is great and appropriate for all ages. If anyone is an audiobook fan, Neil Gaiman is a great reader too.
Crown Duel, by Sherwood Smith? Meliara is still one of my fave fictional badasses.
Omg. You are the first person I have ever seen who has heard of that book. I love Mel so. much.
She is the BEST. Smart and funny and brave…everything I wanted in a heroine.
Also, Shevraeth. (Apparently there was a sequel about his childhood, also? But the cover is SO BAD that I have not been able to bring myself to buy it.)
This is going to sound weird, but I loved that she had serious shortcomings as well. That was so, so important to me. I’ve seriously considered pitching here about just how awesome that book is.
Yeah. Shevraeth. Boy was he ever an influence on my teenage self. (I have to admit I’ve been avoiding the prequel for the same reason, but I should totally give up and buy it because it WOULD be fascinating to see how he ended up as he is in Crown Duel.)
Ooooh, a question: Which version of the book did you read? Because I’ve discovered Sherwood Smith basically revises EVERY TIME there’s a new edition. So the two hardcovers are different from the paperback, etc. Not necessarily huge changes, but noticeable ones.
Shevraeth!! I had a major crush on him as an adolescent.
No, exactly. Like, it was fantastic that she had shortcomings, it made her relatable. I had a lot of problems with some fantasy books growing up because the characters were just so perfect and golden. Fantasy should still be real.
I once made a roleplay character based very much on Shevraeth.
The paperback edition that just made it two volumes + had a short story at the end. I didn’t know that, I wonder why she does it.
I think it’s a variety of things. One difference is that in the original edition (which was published as two hardcovers: Crown Duel and Court Duel), her publisher made her set the book in the same world as her Wren series, and in the paperback she changes it back. I think as she also sees flaws in her work over time, and likes having the chance to go back and fix them. I certainly understand the impulse, but I’ve also always liked Ray Bradbury’s comment, “I don’t believe in tampering with any young writer’s material, especially when that young writer was once myself.” In any case, I don’t think the changes between the editions in Crown Duel are all that large. (Though, now that there’s a digital edition, I’ll have to buy it again! It looks like this one has bits from Shevraeth’s point of view!)
Like rallisaurus, I had a crush on Shevraeth, but I could see him being an incredibly fun character to impersonate as well. Particularly with all of the enigmatic swooping around in capes he does!
So, I know I’m super late, but I love Crown Duel so much I have to respond. I read the first 1/2 of the prequel about Shevraeth, but I couldn’t really get into it. I can no longer remember why I didn’t really like it, but I think it was kind of boring?
Anyway, I have reread Crown Duel sooooo many times. It was actually the only book I brought when I moved overseas for this year. Have you all read any of the short stories? I once had an ongoing argument with some friends about whether or not it was creepy for Flauvic to be romantically involved with [possible spoiler], which led to the phrase “but he’s not a tree anymore!” becoming a Thing in my group of friends.
The Shevraeth book was not bad! It was fairly straightforward military-training-in-a-faraway-land, but still fun. I’ve re-read it at least once.
YES. I read our copy of that book so much it fell apart.
Me too! The cover was very carefully taped back on with packing tape. I still pick it up every now and again.
Love Crown Duel so much, love the short story at the end of the paperback so much, love Sherwood Smith so much.
Sherwood Smith also wrote a wonderful quartet about a girl named Wren that I HIGHLY recommend, especially to this 10 year old. It starts with Wren’s Quest.
I’m pretty sure I read Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine at about that age and with about that reading level. Highly recommended. Levine’s other books vary pretty widely in quality. I can personally recommend The Two Princesses of Bamarre as well, and I’ve heard good things about Fairest, though I haven’t read it myself. If your friend finds she likes Ella Enchanted, then the Princess Tales books might interest her as well. The quality is not nearly as high, but they are amusing little baubles with a similar sense of humor.
YES. I loved Ella Enchanted so much.
BONE by Jeff Smith, if she hasn’t read it already.
I have deep affection for every last person in this thread.
Also anything by Vivian Vande Velde! ESPECIALLY “Heir Apparent.” And also “Curses, Inc.” And, if she likes vampirey romance novels that aren’t dumb and terrible for women, “Companions of the Night.”
And also I remember loving “The Hounds of the Morrigan” by Pat O’Shea. And anything and everything by Bruce Coville, although she might be a little too advanced for that? (Maybe his teen series… the one I’m remembering is “The Eyes of the Tarot.” But he’s got a whole Unicorn Chronicles thing that’s pretty solid too. Also, if you write him, he writes back!)
Bruce Coville totally stands up to time, though – I haven’t read much of his fantasy stuff, but The Ghost in the Third Row, The Ghost Wore Grey, The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed are as delightful to me as a 35-year old as they were to my 10-year old self.
Also: the protagonists are girls (!), I don’t remember too much of that in my early fantasy reading.
Bruce Coville is so solid. I haven’t read Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher in awhile but I’m pretty sure it would still make me cry actual tears. (Also great for boys who need to have it affirmed that they can nurture, too!) Eragon tried to be JTDH in a lot of ways but it failed and it sucks (sorry).
PLEASE GIVE HER FLORA SEGUNDA. EVERYONE PLEASE READ FLORA SEGUNDA https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/229033.Flora_…
I don’t understand how these books are not as popular as Harry Potter. I’m serious. They are funny and endearing, have incredible lady characters and mess around with gender roles in a wonderful and un-self-conscious way. The world-building is excellent but not over-the-top: Flora lives in what is essentially a magic version of Southern California, with some Latin/Mayan/German/Spanish elements. It is smart and great and please give this to your 10/11 year old and your friends and family of every age.
And don’t give her the Belgariad, it is real racist and sexist and also pretty boring!
Oh! Also Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty and the subsequent two books). That Kartik, am I right ladies???
I loved those books!!! This is the first time I’ve met anyone else who has read them.
Yes, you are right on both accounts. Though Gemma Doyle may be a bit on the older side? But Flora Segunda would be perfect!
How has there not been a femslash friday on A Great and Terrible Beauty yet? Because even though I was fairly het-oriented at that age, even I knew the girls had more chemistry together than any of them had with anyone else separately.
Flora Segunda sounds fantastic!
so obvious it’s maybe not obvious, but roald dahl?
When she’s a little older (I read it at 13 and I think that’s also the age I’d recommend) the Roald Dahl Omnibus is great. It’s a collection of all his adult stories and they are super weird and bizarre and wonderful.
My Dahl feelings in summary: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/850881820
You are extremely correct.
Also, Jennifer Donnelley (esp A Northern Light, although Revolution is the actual fantasy one). But not her books for adults, they are rull sexy.
I don’t know what books match what grade levels (my schools and libraries never had grade specific reading lists) but when I was 10 I remember really loving the His Dark Materials books. I also recommend the Hobbit, I read it more around 7 or 8 but it’s one of those ‘for all ages’ books. I also remember The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit being really good (I don’t remember when I read it but maybe 5th grade? or 4th?) and I reread it recently and it’s still good. A Wrinkle in Time is phenomenal. Oh also Harry Potter (I think I started the first one around age 9 and sort of aged with the books as they were published) is also good and has lots of magical adventure.
All of the suggestions already given are great. Also Watership Down, Franny Billingsley’s The Folk Keeper, and Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina.
SERAPHINAAAAAAAA YES
SERAPHINA IS EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING.
Oh, also, I don’t know how it hasn’t come up already, maybe I missed it – Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Then in like 2 years, Tamsin! Then in maybe 2 more, The Innkeeper’s Song!
A lot of great suggestions already, I totally second Megan Whalen Turner and Philip Pullman. I’d also highly recommend Frances Hardinge’s FLY BY NIGHT, or really any of her books. Her writing is pretty sophisticated but the subject matter is solidly middle grade.
I love so many of these suggestions! This one is IMPORTANT in that I wish I could go back in time and give it to my 10-year-old self:
Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison — Features a self-possessed girl protagonist, Norse mythology, and an unconventional, almost dreamy structure, plus the author was a badass*. For a longer, more eloquent description of why everyone should read it: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/01/258384937/crossroad…
*The NYTimes correction to her obituary: “An obituary on Saturday about Naomi Mitchison, the British writer and early feminist, misspelled the surname of the Labor Party leader at whom she once threw a half-plucked partridge. He was Hugh Gaitskell, not Gaitskill.”
Other books:
Graceling series by Kristin Cashore (might be too old for 10?)
Ronia the Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren (a tangle-haired irrepressible girl protagonist)
The Perilous Gard (a smart, stubborn, outspoken girl protagonist, plus faeries plus the Tam Lin legend)
Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley (several girls cross-dress to join Robin Hood’s band; non-graphic sex implied, I think)
Quest for a Maid
Seconding the Perilous Gard and Graceling in particular (and adding those others to my own reading list).
Ohhhhh Ronia, definitely Ronia.
The first Graceling book is probably OK for a 10 year old but the third one really makes sure you understand the rape that’s going on — I would not give it to a child.
All you adults reading this though, GO READ GRACELING because it’s incredible.
The other book that the author of the Perilous Gard wrote– set during the American revolution– can’t remember the name, but it’s good good.
two years late, but–Quest for a Maid! Someone else has heard of this book!
I read it once as an 11 year old and can still describe most of the plot and quote the first line. It clearly made an impression.
My 13-year-old brother and I (I’m a mid-20s grad student) both love Catherynne Valente’s “The Girl Who…” series (starts with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making). The books riff on and overturn all sorts of fairy tale conventions, feature a clever, brave, self-possessed, mistake-making young heroine. The subject matter is completely appropriate for a 10-year-old, but the stories and writing style were enough to keep me enthralled, and I don’t usually go in for YA.
A brief excerpt: “No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back, and to make friends with a wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. … You chose to face your own Death, not to balk at a great sea to cross and no ship to cross it in. And twice now you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you–you chose yourself.”
I love the wyverary. Those books are giving my grown-ass self and my friends a LOT OF FEELINGS.
Awwww yay, always warms the cockles of my heart to hear about boys reading female-led books, b/c when I was in a publishing program, everyone kept telling us, “BOYS WON’T READ BOOKS WITH GIRL PROTAGONISTS NO MATTER WHAT.” But like, tons of boys liked the Hunger Games, so I dunno wtf.
Getting boys to read books about girls is a cause that is dear to my heart. My little brother calls these books his favorite, and I can’t tell you happy I am to be responsible for that state of affairs.
It really amuses me that people would say that. Speaking just for myself, almost all the YA stuff that I remember best and continue to treasure had female protagonists. Didn’t put me off as a pre-teen even a little, and books like Song of the Lioness probably taught me things about girls’ bodies that I didn’t know and would have been way too embarrassed to ask. Female protagonists for all, I say. So if anyone is reading this and wondering “Ah, but what shall I feed my precocious pre-teen boy voracious reader?” my answer would be: all these books!
I love this book’s title and its premise and that quote. Added to my own to-read list and then I’ll gift it after I’m done. 🙂
I am the 34th recommendation for the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but I’m mentioning them anyway! (Especially books one and two. They still hold up so well!)
Other Pat Wrede: Sorcery and Cecilia – epistolary novel that reads a bit like Jane Austen crossed with Diana Wynne Jones involving cousins and the London season and magic and hijinks!
A Matter of Magic, which is a bind up of both Mairelon the Magician and The Magician’s Ward (girl pickpocket gets caught by a wizard and becomes his apprentice)
Shannon Hale’s Goose Girl series and the Princess Academy books would be great for that age.
Patrice Kindl’s Goose Chase is also a lot of fun. (Pay no attention to the terrible sparkling cover.)
Shannon Hale! Also her Book Of A Thousand Days– I remember liking it more than anything else I read of her.
Having also been that 10 year old and who also LOVED (still love) Tamora Pierce, let me say the EMELAN BOOKS. How has no one said this yet?? Tamora Pierce writes another world in addition to Tortall, called Emelan. It is all about magic BUT ALSO FRIENDSHIP and in a lot of ways is even more appropriate for a 10 year old than the Alanna books. It’s about four kids who are all orphaned (more or less) and are brought together to learn how to do their magic. All four are… 11ish? Definitely preteen for the entire first quartet. Then they grow up a little and go off on adventures on their own, but still no one has sex in the second quartet either that I remember.
These books are just great. Seriously.
YES I feel like the Emelan books don’t get as much love, but they are amazing and totally mature in amazing and unexpected ways into the most recent ones.
Robin McKinley! (But early McKinley, The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, not Sunshine.) And Diana Wynne Jones.
And NOT DEERSKIN because oh man that is a rough book.
Maybe for later, though, because it’s so good.
seconding the NOT DEERSKIN NEVER DEERSKIN UGH
I was a weeeee bit traumatized by that book at the tender age of 13 🙁
but do recommend Beauty, Rose Daughter, that newer one about Dragons, etc
(but Sunshine is EXCELLENT. Maybe not for a ten year old. But so excellent.)
She is not ready for a lot of Tanith Lee, but the Black Unicorn Trilogy would be perfect. Also Silver Metal Lover and Biting the Sun.
I also read Kate Elliott’s Jaran for the first time when I was 11. I basically reread that and Clare Bell’s Jaguar Princess one million times when I was in middle school/high school. Both have strong, wonderful, relatable heroines.
eee someone else read the Jaran books!
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
-Amazing amazing amazing amazing. (one of the characters is named Dido and for the longest time I pronounced it Dildo. But I digress)
Frontier Magic by Patricia Wrede
– I (a grown up person) just read them and they are what I always wanted little house on the prairie to be.
A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer.
-Alternate reality magical 1920s france. And international intrigue
Literally everything ever written by Tamora Pierce
Cecelia and the enchanted chocolate pot
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
-Quite dark, and I think obliquely refers to sex, but in a way that went right over my head at the time.
The Royal Diaries Series
-Badass young women being badass. Particularly good as a nice chuck of them are about non-european rulers.
I love Patricia Wrede, but Frontier Magic is really problematic for me (erasing an entire race of people because she wanted to keep the megafauna [even though the theory that Native Americans caused their extinction has been out of favor for a while] and because supposedly she didn’t want to have to deal with the history of genocide [yet she kept slavery]).
I’m gonna be totally self-serving here, but if you’re looking for short stories, SPELLBOUND does fantasy for middle grade (8-12 years old) readers. It also actively looks to publish stories with girl/PoC/LBGT/disabled protagonists, so it’s not just the usual stuff.
(Disclosure: they published a story of mine in the fall 2013 issue, so I’m biased, but… it is pretty great)
It’s here: http://eggplantproductions.com/spellbound-magazin…
I know you have a million suggestions already, but an off-beat and REALLY GOOD one: The Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov.
It is amazing, and might be a good change of pace if the Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, etc. books start to resemble each other plot-wise in her mind, which happens when you read a lot of YA/sci-fi, much as I enjoy it too. Master and Margarita definitely has major fantasy elements and is a book that becomes many many people’s favorite book once they read it.
At age 10, she will not get the M&M. Unless she has a pretty good grasp of history.
I don’t think you need to ‘get’ it to enjoy it (though I do think it may be a bit advanced for a 10-year-old). My first ‘real’ book was Animal Farm, at age 6. I certainly didn’t understand the allegory, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying the story.
Animal Farm is immensely readable as a children’s book though. I also read it very young (had older siblings, and was unwilling to be left behind re: books, essentially) and you get it even if you don’t get the entire meaning. M&M has the parallel Jesus story and all that – it’s quite meta. Idk, I just know so many people who don’t ‘get’ the book at all even as adults.
Did no one else read Juniper or Wise Child by Monica Furlong at that age? They were my absolute favs. The sequel (three-quel?) Cormac was not so good, but the first two were awesome in that proto-feminist, girls should be able to learn and read Latin and do magic sort of way.
Also long sequences about making cheese and weaving and all sorts of hands on stuff.
Love all of the recommendations, obviously. My faves were always Tamora Pierce, Sherwood Smith (especially the under-appreciated Wren books!), Jane Yolen, Patricia Wrede, Garth Nix, Susan Cooper, Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones, Diane Duane, Philip Pullman, and Robin McKinley.
I’d also add Jaspar Fforde’s ongoing Chronicles of Kazam and William Nicholson’s Wind on Fire series!
1. Young Wizards by Diana Duane. It’s dated in some respects, but it’s like a darker, richer Harry Potter in a lot of ways. It explores magic – how and why it works and the notion of responsibility as wizards. I didn’t read all the series but the first few were great.
2. THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING BY T. H. WHITE. I cannot recommend this enough. It’s perfect honestly, at whatever age you read it.
3. Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C Wrede. Sassy girls and dragons and quests.
4. Patricia A McKillip – she’s written some series (Riddlemaster, Beasts of Eld) and some stand alones and they’re all fantastically enchanting.
5. John Bellairs – he wrote some entertainingly scary books
6. Assassin’s Quest series – Robin Hobb. Robin Hobb is astonishingly good – she really has given thought to the world she’s created, and the characters places within it. It’s very satisfying reading involving magic, a kid of magic that is a kind of beastlore, dragons etc. Good things!
7. Railsea by Mieville. A great intro to Mieville – a fantastic retelling of Moby Dick (yes, it’s enjoyable!)
8. HAS NO ONE SAID EARTHSEA??? Shame on you all. Le Guin is queen of all things.
9. Eva Ibbotson is smart and charming.
10. The Eddas if the kid likes Tolkien.
PS: At 10, I don’t think you need to weed out books so much. I read Amber Spyglass when it came out and I was 10, and I read the first two several years before that and it didn’t do anything too terrible to me. I also read Tamora Pierce’s books around the same time and the marginal amounts of sex and whatever didn’t bother me either..
Seconding the Young Wizards series!
Highly endorse The Soprano Sorceress Series by L E Modesitt
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned the Bartimaeous trilogy. Ingenious take on a magic based world that isn’t high fantasy, presents the characters with a multitude of morally gray situations, and there really aren’t any sexual situations at all. I loved them when they came out. Also, the titular character is sassy as hell and I love it.
I see you have many replies, but just as a librarian let me say that I don’t think most books for young adults are even at a 10/11th grade reading level. I don’t think most books for adults are either. Reading level may be determined by vocabulary and sentence complexity and not by content or complexity of themes. So finding books on that high of a reading level that will have appropriate content and fit her interests may be tough. My advice to parents in this situation is to let your child read what they love to read regardless of level if you want to raise a life long reader.
Authors to explore: Tamora Pierce (everything!), Diane Duane’s Wizard series, Anne McCaffrey (I started with the Pern books and then the Talent books), Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, Jim Hines, James A Owen…
I am commenting one hundred years late because a) I am nostalgic for our Tamora Pierce discussions on the Hairpin (I am the commenter formerly known as miwome) and b) THIS IS MY FAVORITE SUBJECT HOW COULD I NOT.
The only things I have to add to all the wonderfulness already recced are:
-Pretty much anything by E. Nesbit (the prose may be simpler than she’d like, but they were written long enough ago that the “for children” style becomes sort of exotic? If she likes Narnia I think she’d like Nesbit. Plus, less Christian weirdness!) I remember particularly liking Wet Magic and Five Children and It.
-Plain Kate! PLAIN KATE. The prose is super beautiful, so it should keep her occupied, and it’s got a really great female protagonist and a talking cat so awesome as to rival Faithful, and all the fantasy/quest stuff is really beautiful and I may have wept at the ending.
-I read Snow Crash at around that age and loved it to bits and back, but I have recently learned not everyone feels this way. Without knowing the kid it’s hard to say. Male protagonist, cyberpunk, but great female characters; really cool stuff about languages and programming and how they’re all sort of the same; Sumerian gods. On the other hand, there is one sex scene. It never bothered me, but then I was devouring Harlequin romance novels by that age, so like I said it depends.
-People have recced Pratchett and Gaiman separately, but nobody seems to have recced Good Omens. ALLOW ME TO STEP INTO THAT BREACH. Really great meditation on good and evil and free will, you know, that sort of thing.
-Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. There is some sex stuff in it, but it’s very very un-graphic (and positive!), not unlike what’s in Alanna. If she loves reading, she will love this book, because while it is about some other things it is also about loving books.
-Dragon’s Milk by Susan Fletcher!!!! Dragons have been gone for centuries, but then they sort of show back up and our heroine has to smuggle dragon babies to a place where they can go and be safe. She is great and it is definitely an adventure.
-I VERY MUCH SECOND The Hounds of the Morrigan
-I know you didn’t ask about comics, but honestly the first trade of the new Captain Marvel is super feminist and wonderful and has time travel and alien tech and I may have cried a little bit on the train, shhhhhh shhhhhh
-I remember really liking the Sevenwaters Trilogy by Juliet Marillier, but I haven’t read them in years and so I can’t be sure they’re appropriate? I think they are, though. Maybe you should check if you ever have time after all of these recs.
-I looooved A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, but the prose might be too simple for her. It’s very meta, both in an Enchanted Forest hey-look-at-this-trope way and in an even more literal way (characters being like “fuck this” and just jumping to other pages, etc), so the story itself is pretty sophisticated. Depends which she cares about more, I guess.
-I really like the Percy Jackson series, which in addition to adventure and humor has the advantage of also being a crash course in Greek mythology, and who doesn’t want that, eh.
-there was something else but it refuses to do more than hang around the margins of my brain, which is rude, so I guess it doesn’t deserve to be recced anyway. HOW YOU LIKE THAT, ungraspable thing.
-NOT NOW, but when she’s older and books that deal frankly with sex are something that would be good for her, I really recommend Kushiel’s Dart. But be careful, because there is a fair amount of rape in those books, and while I personally think it’s great because media that actually confronts rape and calls it what it is and centers those stories around the survivor(s) BEING SURVIVORS not victims is really important, it could be rough on the wrong person. I loved them at about fourteen, I think, but YMMV.
-On a similar note, if you can find Diane Duane’s first series, The Tale of the Five, they are really fun fantasy and also super sex-positive! And there is much less of the sad sexual violence stuff.
This is extremely late, but I wanted to mention a few more. Frances Hardinge is indeed great, and I think your young friend might also enjoy Runemarks by Joanne Harris. It’s funny, full of Norse mythology, lots of adventure, and LONG! RJ Anderson’s faery books are also great, but their US distribution was badly mishandled. You’ll need to order from England to get the complete series, the more accurate titles, and the better cover art.
Wise Child and Juniper by Monica Furlong.
Does your fiance have the Rogue/Wraith Squadron books? Read those.
Also ALANNA. These books are great these books are awesome everyone read them forever.
I was SO NERVOUS to read these because I was afraid you ‘d think they were terrible. Phew! I loved these books! And obviously George is the best, real talk. Please read all the rest of Tamora Pierce’s books and let us know what you think.
I AM SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT
these books were my CHILDHOOD
(Also, Tammy is SUPER-NICE. Instead of having a facebook fan page she lets all her fans friend her and sometimes she comments on their statuses and stuff)
BRB FRIENDING TAMORA PIERCE. I friended Ellen Emerson White and Francesca Lia Block and I still squeal like a child when EEW “likes” my statuses.
When my cats were kittens she commented on a couple of pictures of them. None of my friends understood my giddyness.
BUT TAMORA PIERCE THINKS MY KITTENS ARE CUTE.
My pre-teen cousin loved these! Successfully introducing kids to books you loved when you were their age is one of life’s great pleasures.
“I have a longstanding ambivalence toward high-fantasy. I know that sentence will make many of you close this tab and I’m sorry, but not all of us have your strength.”
Oh god, thank you for this. Any time I hint that I’m not interested in Game of Thrones (I don’t dislike it! I’m just. Not. Interested.), I am besieged from all sides.
If you’re looking for a book for adults that is also a great example of “I’m a badass doing traditionally male stuff, but I like womanly stuff too!”, may I recommend Hild by Nicola Griffith?
I have been known to warn people away from the Game of Thrones books if they’re not at least passingly familiar with high fantasy. Those books are tough to get through if you’re not used to it. No shame in personal preferences, yo!
I want to be part of the zeitgeist and get into Game of Thrones, but I got kind of bored reading Tolkein (“Oh, another song? Skip ahead a few pages…”) so maybe I shouldn’t bother?
Although I liked Tolkien, I actually found I enjoyed GOT more – the storytelling moved faster, or something? Anyway, I’m a Tolkien fan but I don’t reread him very much. I started GOT on stress leave at the end of November and have read all five plus reread the third and fourth already.
Oh, agreed. Tolkein is very given to long description of a kind that is (deservedly, IMO) not popular in today’s literature. And yes, the songs are boooooring. GRRM’s pacing is much, much better, which isn’t saying much.
I think Martin is easier to read than Tolkien because SO MANY THINGS HAPPEN in GoT and the storytelling jumps around from different viewpoints. It’s just that SO MANY THINGS HAPPEN and it can be hard to keep track of them sometimes, and in between the things happening is a lot of “we’re sailing on a boat for a third of this book, action may be happening elsewhere but we’re all just talking, la de da,” etc.
Not to mention, I think part of the great thing about the Game of Thrones books is how well he takes high fantasy tropes and skewers them (sometimes literally)
Incessant Hild proselytism high five!
Yes! Everyone needs to read it immediately. Between that and The Goldfinch, late 2013 was book paradise for me.
I love high fantasy, but the GoT books are still Not For Me. I got confused and bored after slogging through the 3rd book. I’ll straight up say THE SHOW IS BETTER, I can actually follow the storylines, and I can tell who the fuck people are and what the fuck is going on.
And for decent pretty non-problematic (that I remember, please feel free to correct me though), though male-protagonist and male-authored, The Name of the Wind. Author self-identifies as feminist, though ymmv. I’ve not heard any real grossness about him myself, but again, please feel free to correct me if you’ve heard otherwise.
Patrick Rothfuss is awesome, he wrote the best, nastiest review of Esio Trot within the last few days and I want everyone to read it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/850881820
I actually think I like his books better than ASoIaF, but when I make book suggestions to patrons, it goes: if you like ASOIAF, try Rothfuss, if you liked that, try Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards.
That is an awesome takedown.
I liked watching the show while I was reading the books. (Gooo stress leave for all kinds of disposable time!) It definitely helped keep everyone straight.
I love these books so, so much. I re-read them every few years, and they just never get old.
That said, Jaya, if what you love about these books is Alanna, don’t read Star Wars, the Hobbit, or Redwall. Read His Dark Materials, or other Tamora Pierce books, and branch out from there.
(ETA: I think we may all have to agree to disagree re: Redwall. It just never did it for me. *ducks*)
I loved Redwall as a 12-year-old. I had a really good friend in elementary and high school who could not read fantasy, not even Harry Potter, so I get that fantasy just does not do it for some people. But, the other thing about Redwall is that I find it’s one of those books where there is a sweet-spot of age which for most people is somewhere in the 8-13 range. If you don’t first read it somewhere in there, you very likely will not love it like someone who did.
Ah, that makes sense. I picked it up late, I guess, and just…meh. I’m generally all about fantasy, so I was surprised not to love it.
I forgot to mention that His Dark Materials is maybe the only fantasy thing I ever liked until this. Probably because there were no fucking maps.
You might enjoy Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy, which starts with “Sabriel”. It’s been a while since I read it, but I recall it had similar elements to both His Dark Materials and to the Alanna books.
can’t agree more on this one. I’ve reread this series a bunch of times and have never been disappointed.
I got a bit emotional the other day telling my boyfriend about what a driving force these books were in my (pre) teen decisions to take up Ju-Jitsu and horseriding, and the lifelong conviction that being tough, competent and keeping your shit together in a sword-swinging was not at all incompatible with being a woman, rarrr. I might actually write to Tamora Pierce one day in gratitude. I am still not able to fire a bow from a galloping horse but I’m sure I *could*.
You are totally right about the order of awesomeness of the men. I was also convinced George was 35, but maybe just cos he’s so emotionally mature? Alanna ditching Jonathan is the best romantic life lesson I can think if to teach young girls.
People who aren’t Jaya: the action is freaking great. There are meddling gods, but not too meddling. There is an evil sorcerer, magic swords, AN ENCHANTED CAT WITH PURPLE EYES, snow, deserts, lots of rad fighting with weapons of all descriptions, and a surly steward with a heart of gold. Honestly, read them read them.
I don’t know if I have words enough to explain how deeply I loved these books growing up. I am convinced that they planted my very first seeds of feminism, and in fact, Alanna leaving Jonathan really did a lot to solidify the idea that not only could I feel free to ditch a guy who wasn’t right for me, but I could also continue to have great adventure without him.
You know, like sticking my hands into a purple fire to channel magic, or fighting an evil wizard with a phantom sword, or meeting an actual Goddess.
If you’re in the UK, there is a place that does horseback archery courses… Not sure they’d let you gallop, but it’s a start.
I saw those guys doing a performance at a reenactment thingy. Me and my friend, instead of enjoying the show, glowered and hissed ‘we could totally do that’ with our arms folded. True fact: the woman in the group had very long hair AND a breastplate AND long boots. The horses were the most beautiful horses *dies of jealousy*
I have also been convinced George was 35 for, oh, the last 16 years and several re-readings. It doesn’t help that Daine really does end up with a much older man. (There is really no way Numair isn’t WAY older, right? And he’s her teacher, too.) But also, I kind of feel like maybe Pierce was not that clear on George’s actual age, because he totally is written like he’s much older for most of the series, whatever the stated age gap is.
Yeah, Numair is way older. I always thought George was in the 5-10 years older range, which is a lot in the first couple books but not terribly older by the time they actually get together for real.
On the subject of Alanna ditching Jon, I remember reading that Pierce had intended for them to get married all along, but then when she had to actually write it… she just. Could. Not. Because that wasn’t Alanna’s character.
Anways, I am HERE for that being an incredible life lesson and also #TeamGeorge.
“I have a longstanding ambivalence toward high-fantasy.”
BOOK RACIST!!! (j/k. mostly.) I’m glad you’ve learned your lesson. You probably WON’T like Tolkein (he’s verbose, he won’t stop writing multipage songs, there are no awesome lady characters like at all, there are WAY more maps). You will probably like Redwall and cry. You should totally read A Song of Ice and Fire, cuz it’s awesome. Also, Pierce has like 4 more series set in Tortall, The Immortals, Beka Cooper (about George’s ancestress), The Trickster books (about Alana and George’s daughter), and Protector of the Small. Winding Circle might be the same world too, I’m not sure. Oh and she gets much more comfortable with writing the sexy bits.
Also it goes more like George, Jon, George, Liam, George.
Yes – READ ALL THE TORTALL!!
(I think she might really hate ASOIAF, though? Whatever, I still love it.)
BUT ARYA.
If I have another daughter, it’s a toss-up whether she’s going to be named Arya or Alanna.
Arya is in, like, 10% of the books by volume.
BUT SANSA <3
I like Sansa too! (I actually like every single female character, INCLUDING CAT AND CERSEI.)
I was thinking she’d hate ASOIAF as well, considering how plodding those books get in places. I love the story and the characters but there is SO MUCH BORING FILLER (especially as the books go on).
DON’T FORGET WILD MAGIC
I approve of your man-odering re: Alanna, how are you about Daine’s final get-together?
It totally CAME OUT OF NOWHERE for me. I was like, “Wait…WHAT!?” Did not think those two had chemistry at all!
I was definitely less behind it than Alanna/George-I was still shipping Daine and hunky prince Khaddar (or whatever his name was. From Carthark) until well into the last book. Apaz Pierce has an older man thing (further down the thread).
I ALSO THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA GET WITH PRINCE KHADDAR!!! *high five
As someone who maybedefinitely had an older guy/teacher thing as a youngling, NO CHEMISTRY IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE.
It didn’t come out of nowhere! She brought dinosaurs back to life and destroyed a city when she thought he was dead! It was epic!
Yeah, you know who else you do that for? YOUR DAD. Or your older brother that you love very much. (I believe something similar happened in Alanna, even.) That doesn’t have to mean you want the d!
shhhhhhhh!
A Song of Ice and Fire was described to me thusly “War of the Roses with dragons.” I can appreciate Tolkein, but I still have to skip the songs and history. Martin is way more accessible, I think. Also, ladies exist!
“there are no awesome lady characters like at all”
Galadriel would like to have a word with you. But then, she only appears briefly and doesn’t really do anything other than refuse the Ring and throw shade at her doofus husband every time he speaks. So… yeah, actually, I agree with you.
(Though this is actually why I’m excited about the third HOBBIT movie despite the general suckiness of the first two, because it promises some sweet Galadriel Vs. Sauron action. Like, of all the back story that Jackson is unnecessarily bringing to the foreground, the only one I care about is Galadriel laying waste to hordes of orcs and PWNING the Necromancer).
I don’t count it if they don’t really get to do anything.
This is why I’d love to see a SILMARILLION TV series (HBO, Netflix, whatever) since it’s the only Tolkien work where the lady characters are actually active and central (Melian, Luthien, Galadriel). Like, if I can see the Luthien Vs. Sauron battle on the bridge to the Isle of Werewolves realized in glorious live-action HD, I can die a happy nerd.
I would watch the shit out of this over and over until I died of dehydration
It’d be so great, right? And it’s even got dragons, political infighting, and brother-sister incest, so it’s got all the current popular fantasy tropes.
Yes. Also everyone in it is slashable as hell, so…game on.
I just started writing some sweet Melkor/Feanor fanfic in my head right now.
Oh, that pair. Will they, or won’t they??
THEY WILL. A LOT. And, like, what if Feanor made the Silmarils FOR Melkor because they were in love and the Vala kept Melkor from the light of the trees during his imprisonment/parole, and then Melkor destroyed the Two Trees so that Feanor’s jewels would truly be special, containing as they did the only light of the Trees left in the world, but Feanor was disgusted by what Melkor did and rejected him, so that’s why Melkor stole the Silmarils and became Morgoth and **quits job and dedicates life to Melkor/Feanor slash**
Excellent, glad you’re on that, I’ll get to work on the Maedhros/Fingon (too easy, but still) and the Finrod/everyone and then we can start our fanzine
Also, Eowyn.
Right! How did I forget Eowyn?
Ohhh I’m glad you read these Jaya. Tamora Pierce is a really interesting author! If you read more of her books, you can sort of see the moment when she realizes she has a progressive soapbox and just starts WORKING IT like no one’s business. I have mixed feelings about this because she’s just not always very good at it, and sometimes it’s terrible and condescending to minorities and oppressed groups. But she’s also very aware of what fantasy and girl-lit are lacking, and even when she fucks it up her way of going about fixing that is really interesting. If you want to read more, I’d go with the Protector of the Small series first – those have a ton of the worst and best things about Pierce.
YES also I love that she’s clearly working on it, and if you follow her tumblr there’s a lot of her being like ‘I never thought about this issue before and I am working on it,” she’s so awesome.
I love fantasy but sorry guys, I can take or leave Tolkein. Don’t jump on the Star Wars stuff unless you’re already hard into the original trilogy. Redwall is weird, but way better than its current successor, the Warriors series(es) by Erin Hunter which are just post-dumb and kids love them.
You should read N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Jane Yolen’s Sister Light Sister Dark, and a bunch of Robin McKinley instead.
(I’d say Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows of the Queen trilogy but maybe it’s only magical if you first read it at age 11)
Oh, yeah to the Robin McKinley, based on this I think Jaya would like Sunshine a lot.
N.K. Jemisin is so good, and writes like, the sexiest sex scenes in the whole genre.
Same – I have read fantasy for my entire life pretty much (my mother read me McCaffrey’s dragon books) and I find Tolkein stultifying. I read it in college when the movies started to come out and every time I read more than three pages I needed to take a nap.
THIS THIS THIS! I would recommend anything by Robin McKinley, the Great Alta books by Jane Yolen, and the Sabriel books by Garth Nix.
Lord of the Rings and Song of Ice and Fire don’t have much in common with the Alanna books except for magic and maps.
REDWALL TALK. It is a lot of adventuring and action and things with odd names and castles, but it’s also very approachable (or at least it was for me, but I was raised on high fantasy, so YMMV). The Redwall books also have the best descriptions of fictional food I’ve ever read.
If you’re going to start Redwall, I’d start with Mariel of Redwall, which is about a tiny girl mouse who beats up rats with a rope she calls Gullwhacker. The plot also features a badass lady warrior rabbit.
Don’t read Martin the Warrior unless you want to be emotionally devastated by it until adulthood.
I could not deal with Redwall when I did a reread as an adult. So long winded and also so full of lady mice doing the nurturing and manly mice doing the killing.
Just replying to say the FOOD. I still think about the cheeses sometimes, and those whatever they were mole baby things slathered in honey. Except it was pastry, not actual mole babies, I think the name just sort of sounded like/was like/reminded me of mole babies?
I have done a quick google search and not solved this problem. Memory is a weird and capricious thing.
Something something clotted cream something cordials?
I once heard that Redwall was written with blind children in mind, so there’s extra focus on the scents, tastes, and general tactile sensations of the world. Side effect, it makes you ravenously hungry every twenty pages.
I just verified this via Brian Jacques’ wikipedia page and it is DELIGHTFULLY TRUE. Thank you for sharing that, it made my day better.
I wouldn’t recommend reading all those books as an adult, maybe just Mariel and Martin’s story’s. And the one with the crazy badger lady.
But honestly…
I’m just really excited to be part of a Redwall conversation on the internet!
Eulalllllliiiaaaaaaa!
I can but agree with the tag re: Star Wars and The Courtship of Princess Leia.
I’ve always had a hard time getting into the standard high fantasy too (apart from Tolkien and, like, Game of Thrones), but you could also try Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, which are high fantasy, but primarily about people rather than action. Also, they’re by UKL and therefore The Gods’ Own Fantasy Novels.
Yes! And there are tons of people of colour in it! The hero is!
EARTHSEA is probably my favorite fantasy series. It also has the only “system of magic” that I don’t find overly tedious and ridiculous, because it’s a language and the way it works is so cool but also makes sense in a way.
Earthsea books are PERFECT. Love them and LeGuin.
Yes, Earthsea is a beautiful read.
I’ll have to pass these on to my oldest daughter, who is into all things fantasy and at the age where I think this series would appeal to her.
Jaya, I sighed with relief at your confession that you don’t like high fantasy. I don’t either. I am surrounded by people, including my daughter and my husband, who adore it but I just can’t. My eye cross if a page has more than 3 made-up words for made-up things. No thanks. But I have been trying because I want to help my kid find stuff that’s worth reading.
I can’t deal with fantasy either. Narnia was about the peak for me at age 13. I have tried and I have failed, and I am tired of people recommending me A Song of Ice and Fire and Tolkein and sci-fi and stuff because I just cannot get into it. I can’t. At all. Another sigh of relief with Jaya.
I have found my people!! Where were you when my mom gave me Redwall and I sorta left it on my shelf and went back to building a fort for my hamsters?
In Grade 5 my teacher read Martin the Warrior aloud to us in class and I spent multiple hours drawing flowers no my notebook out of sheer boredom.
Hadn’t heard of this book until now, and I just tried to look it up and felt my eyes starting to cross… See, I like some sci fi and some fantasy, but it’s almost never the big massive trendy ones that everyone gets into. And people seem to equate this with being actively hostile to the genre, or turning my nose up at geeky stuff, or not giving it a chance – no! Geeky is awesome. We are just not required to sign on wholesale for all of it. For example, the parts that involve white people getting into elaborate faux-medieval scenarios are often not for me. Sorrynotsorry?
I was reading every L.M. Montgomery book I could get my hands on and saying stuff like, “Let’s have a sleepover a fortnight from now,” to my very confused peers. And begging my mom to let me play at the house of the friend who had the cool fort for her rat. 🙂
MEEE TOOOOOO
I mean, if you were building a fort for your hamsters, I can see why she thought a book about a big stone abbey full of mice was a good idea.
YESSSSSSS! I am so excited for this thread!
I saw Tamora Pierce at last year’s National Book Festival and she was fucking amazing. She conned the whole audience into believing she was a mousy monotone speaker and we were all going to feel bored and awkward (I was in the front row and I could barely even look at her it was so awkward) for 30 minutes while she read an excerpt from her book and then she laughed maniacally at us. And then she did a very honest Q&A for the rest of the time and it was so good my husband, who had never read one of her books, decided that he really needed to.
Ahhhh yes I was there, too!! So good, I fell for it completely.
I was at ALA Midwinter 2013 when they announced the award winners (Caldecott etc) and Tamora Pierce got a lifetime achievement award. It was a room full of people standing and whooping and cheering for her, and me and my library school friends crying unabashedly because she’d been so amazing for us.
Librarians are the best.
Not that I’m biased, by you know…being one.
it’s just science that we’re the best. LIBRARY SCIENCE OH YEAH I WENT THERE.
I love these books dearly. But George is 19 when Alanna is 11. Apparently Tamora Pierce has a thing for older men and lets it show in her books.
COUGH DAINE/NUMAIR COUGH OH GOD
I’m relatively certain that my obsession with The Immortals had something to do with my penchant for older men as a teenager.
I saw a fancast on tumblr a while ago that cast young Jeff Goldblum as Numair and now I can’t stop seeing it.
That’s…that’s somehow right, but also really weird…
Tammy occasionally pops in to comment over on Mark Reads bc he’s reading all her books, and it is confirmed that she specifically had Jeff Goldblum in mind. So, you know.
Ughhhh whyyyyyy
what no! that’s hot! Jeff Goldblum yes! I mean he really IS a bit old now, but have you seen Jurassic Park. Come on.
HE WAS 30
SHE WAS 15
can i make it anymore obvious
But he waaaaaits……yeah I know. It is a bit.
Not sure how old she was meant to be by the time they get together-19? But very battle-hardened and mature….he would have been about 33. IDK, I think that’s kinda alright-they’ve more or less worked through the power imbalance by then, she’s got a lot up on him (isn’t that what age-gap problems are about? Also the parental is a thing, but it’s not like he ADOPTED HER-does finding her real father enable Daine+Numair to move out of those roles? Hmm). I have several friends in their early 30s who are still in the relationships they started in around 20 with that sort of age gap.
Adrien Brody for the Numair fancast from me btw.
No, he’s 17! (Trust, I just did a reread not that long ago. I also thought he was 19-20 before that though!)
Wait, really!? I thought he was early 20s. I read the Protector of the Small first so I already knew they were together so I was less weirded out when it happened, but he’s still significantly older than her.
Yeah, it is weird that he’s kind of like “heyyy” when she’s 11 and he’s super not, even if it’s not a sexual thing until later.
I seem to remember he thinks she’s a boy until she’s like 12/13 and the period thing happens?
My reaction to George as a child: he is too old! Grown-ups are gross!
My reaction to George as a teenager: he is the PERFECT age for Alanna! Older men are dreamy!
My reaction to George as a young adult: dude, you are way too old for Alanna – step away from the child!
So, here’s a thing: High Fantasy Set Somewhere Other Than The UK is my jam.
You maybe want to try the British Raj in Neo-India next, ie: McKinley’s The Blue Sword, and then Jane Yolen’s Pit Dragon books, mostly Dragon’s Blood.
YES to Pit Dragons.
Hands up who wants to try freezing in a desert, imprinted hard on A Horse And His Boy also!
…. just kidding, did you know deserts sometimes get snow in August, they do, don’t do it.
A Horse And His Boy was my favourite, but the end gave me such rage. Aravis was a badass and she just gets condescended to, hmpf.
Upping for McKinley, although I think I liked Hero and the Crown more.
Loved these books! My parents got the first one for my little sister, whose name is Alanna and who never actually read it (fantasy wasn’t really her thing). Worked out well for me because I devoured all four of them. My eleven-or-so-year-old mind was blown by this girl/woman who just went out there and Did things. Little Voracious Reader Me knew that wasn’t something you saw in every book.
I recently read through the Mark Reads summaries of all four books because I haven’t read them in a while and our copies are long gone (cleaned out when I moved away, I think) and it made me realise I really need to pick them up again!
Aaaaaah, Tamora Pierce! As a pre-teen I did this thing while I read, which was to imagine the book was a movie, and I was (obviously) the main character. This series was the absolute BEST for that, which I had completely forgotten until reading this. Also great (but not as good) was Circle of Magic. And then His Dark Materials blew it all out of the water….. Oh, to be 12 again and have nothing to do but read excellent, formative fiction.
I definitely read bits of the books out loud so I could practice for the inevitable movie auditions and ROCK THEM.
YES JAYA. I am so glad this piece finally happened. GEORGE 4EVER.
Also, I got to meet and introduce Tamora Pierce at a book signing when I was 11 and it was one of the greatest days of my entire life.
Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon <3 <3 a billion <3s foreverrrr
You should read Pierce’s “Wild Magic” series – also has a badass lady protagonist who gets shit done and is simultaneously a girl! which I find to be sadly lacking in fantasy. And I’m going to go ahead and caution you against the books you name at the end of your post, based mostly on the things you liked and didn’t like about Alanna…if you prefer feels to swords, the Tolkien/Redwall/Star Wars end of the spectrum will almost certainly be less than ideal.
Also!! there’s a set of sequels to Alanna which is about her and George’s daughter – the Trickster books (you should read the Wild Magic ones first though). They don’t have the sheer YA plot RIGHTNESS that I get from Alanna and Daine, but the books are longer and have more detailed world-building, which is cool (I think cultural depiction is a slippery slope for Pierce, but she’s a nice lady and she tries hard and sometimes it’s pretty good).
Amen to all of this!
AAAAAAAAAA TAMORA PIERCE AAAAAAAAAAAA
I love love loved these books when I read them! George is definitely the best.
Also I think if you want to try Tolkien again just to see, I’d start with the Hobbit! It’s more accessible than the big honking LotR trilogy is. I’m a huge fan of Tolkien myself (being one of those weirdos that doesn’t even skip the songs and legitimately enjoys when there’s a huge tangent about the history of a freaking sword thrown into the middle of a scene), but I understand his work is sometimes borderline stupidly dense. But I’m a (AN) historian, we’re dense-writing junkies by nature.
I can’t get past that map. Or does plate tectonics not work the same way in a fantasy universe? The topography makes no sense!
I think maps with Pierce are kind of like numbers with JK Rowling — you just kinda have to go with it. Things are where they are, and travel takes the time it takes.
If I’m remembering correctly there are some old early-edition maps that have Trebond actually *in* Scanra, so, yeah. Just trust.
Oh, also! Has anyone else here read Django Wexler’s The Thousand Names? It’s a bit of a slow mover, and not a high fantasy, but based on the 18th century instead of medieval). WINTER/BOBBY/FEOR ARE MY LIFE NOW!!! I haven’t been this into a new fantasy series in a while.
I never managed to get into these as a child, but maaaaan, the Trickster books (about George and Alanna’s equally great daughter) are pretty fantastic. Lady knights were never my bag, but I’ll take courtly intrigue any day.
I really, really loved Aly’s sassy smarts. I heard Tamora Pierce say once that she thought she had betrayed the sisterhood by writing a heroine who prevails through subterfuge instead of smashing people with swords (less of a woman succeeding in a completely man’s world type of thing?), but I liked seeing a different way in which women can be powerful.
It is important to state that George is obviously the best and sexiest and swooniest and I love him. He was one of my formative literary love interests, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
But I also really like Liam, and here is why: first of all, HOT. Sensual mouth + muscles + dragon-eyes that change colors = yes please.
Second of all, I like that he isn’t classically handsome (Jon, BLECH). I can’t remember a single time in all my history of reading that someone with bad skin was described as being mega attractive, and it makes me really happy.
Third of all, the Liam storyline introduced my very innocent, very devoutly Christian wait-until-marriage eleven-year-old self to the idea that two people who cared about each other but weren’t in True Love could have sex and then later their relationship could end… and then they could carry on being decent people capable of loving other people, having learned and grown from their relationship instead of being emotionally and morally devastated forever. It had genuinely never occurred to me before then that that was possible. So for me Liam was the first inkling of a mindset that didn’t brutally judge myself and other people for non-soul-mate-sexytimes, and even though soul-mate-George is my favorite I have a very tender spot in my heart for Liam.
I would thumbs-up this comment more if I could. Tamora Pierce for sex-positive fantasy, yeah!
That is a really good point!
Yes, I also really like that Liam existed, because he was there to show (again, in a new way after Jon) that you can care about someone and still be incompatible with them, and that you’re not responsible for someone else’s baggage, and that you can love someone and still recognize that This Is Not Going To Happen and be okay with it and move on because you have so much more going on for you!
That’s what I really liked about Liam too, especially looking back on it. Like, Jon is her *first love* or whatever, and she ends up with George, so I think it’s super important that she has Liam too, to show that relationships a) can happen and b) are worthwhile, even if they’re not True Love, like you said.
on the “THIS IS THE COOOOOOOOLEST” front: THE THINKING WOMAN’S GUIDE TO REAL MAGIC. she has to learn her powers and she appreciates the *shit* out of them. it’s awesome!
I just looked that up and based solely on their reviews (and your good taste, being a Toast reader) – YUP, THAT’S COMING HOME WITH ME TONIGHT.
I don’t think I ever read Tamora Pierce as a kid, which is weird because YA fantasy was my JAM. My fave was OBVIOUSLY His Dark Materials, but I also really liked The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper and Garth Nix’s books, mostly Sabriel. It’s about a badass teen girl (I think she was a teenager) who is a necromancer, but like, a good one? It’s been a while since I read it, I just know I was really into it.
OMG THE OLD KINGDOM. That was SO AWESOME. Sabriel is the first book, and Lirael and Abhorsen round out the trilogy. Totally worth a reread if you haven’t picked them up – I read them at 11 and 27 and they STILL WORKED.
Alanna was basically my childhood best friend.
Spoilers for next series: Thayet definitely isn’t a stay-put kind of queen, though!
She does have like, 7 kids, and can be diplomatic when she needs to be, which Alanna just can’t.
Also on the “THIS IS THE COOLEST!” front, the Young Wizards books by Diane Duane hit the mark pretty well. Taking up wizardry occasionally brings on more difficult life situations for the characters, but I can’t remember a single moment where any of them regret becoming wizards. They’re too busy teleporting up to the moon to hang out with their friends and watch the Earth set. Y’know, like we all did when we were teenagers. The first book is SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD, my personal favorite is A WIZARD ABROAD.
Oh, yes. Duane’s books made wizarding look like so much fun–and, also, weirdly sciency in some ways. Nerdy tween me loved that a jaunt to the moon required them to think about bringing air. Wizard Abroad was clearly the best (in part because of attractive, brooding Irish dudes).
I love the nerdery of the Duane books, too. I particularly enjoy that she’s enthusiastic about technology and tends to incorporate current technology into the books regardless of the books’ internal chronology, so that in book three they have 1980s style Macs and by book seven or eight they all have iPods.
And speaking of nerdery, she posts pretty actively on tumblr about whatever interests her, including fandom, writing, random science things, and the Irish dude she’s married to: http://dduane.tumblr.com/ .
She’s trying to fix that timeline problem now. You can buy updated “New Millennium” ebooks of the full series from Diane Duane’s website now, where everything happened on a consistent timeline over the last few years. I haven’t read High Wizardry to see how she got the computer species to make sense in a book set fifteen years later, though.
Oh, I didn’t mean to make that sound like I thought it was a problem! I genuinely do love that. I’m a computer science nerd, and it’s rare that I come across a fantasy author who incorporates technology in their books in a way that doesn’t feel weird or contrived or like they’re trying to speak a second language. Plus, it’s fun to watch the last thirty years of computing in fast-forward. I’m definitely going to read the New Millenium editions at some point, but I’m very happy having the originals on my bookshelf.
Most books about tomboys I read were basically books with male protagonists who at some point had long hair/kept proclaiming their hatred of dresses. Alanna is a knight and a fighter, but she is still a girl.
wow man that’s harsh.
side point: I have literally never met anybody in my entire life who hated dresses, including myself, who was not a girl or who had not been treated as a girl throughout childhood. If there are such things as girl things, this is one.
main point: I too hate the whole thing where being a stereotypical tomboy is the only authority-sanctioned escape route out of compulsory femininity (not least because it restricts that escape to childhood — nobody is called a tom-man, if you will.) But I do not think it is an improvement to cut off that one and only unsatisfactory escape route by saying that even if you are a tomboy in fantasy fiction, you STILL have to care about all this hairdo & dresses & tea rigamarole, because, well, girls do, they just do, that’s all. The reason all literary tomboys used to end up hating compulsory femininity is because if you hate it, that’s the only archetype in which you were allowed to dwell. the causality goes in circles.
Anyhow I am all for dislocating the site of fictional gender rebellion away from the tomboy because I don’t care about athletic pursuits and would much rather have read books about unfeminine girls who killed people with their brains while lounging on the couch, that is much more my kind of thing. I struggle to identify with jocks at the best of times and with the recent decades’ trend towards all girls being appropriately girly, even (especially ?) fantasy jocks, I have fewer impulses to try. though I should because I am sure it is good for me.
That statement didn’t quite sit well with me either! I don’t want to try to speak for Jaya, but I have similar thoughts along the lines of:
It’s nice to see a female protagonist who rejects gender norms but does not express disdain for femininity/stereotypically feminine behaviors, thus putting down all girls who like said stereotypically feminine things.
Basically, I’m not a huge fan of compulsory femininity, but I’m also not a fan of disparaging girls/women who internalize all of that stuff. So maybe we don’t want our heroines to be “appropriately girly” but it would be nice to have non-girly heroines who don’t also talk about how dresses are stupid and how they’re “not like other girls.”
Am I even making any sense? My brain is not working so well today.
Yeah, I agree completely with paragraph 2 and partly with paragraph 3. It’s just that the only thing worse, in my mind, than declaring yourself to be not like the other girls is to declare somebody else to be not like the other girls (or not to be a girl at all.)
also I know for a lot of girls with a higher jock-tolerance than what I have, all those literary tomboys of yore were an immense relief – you know, finally somebody like me! (because misogynist counternarratives notwithstanding, most girls don’t take ostentatious pride in being the only one of their sex to do or to be whatever — if you don’t hate other girls to start with, it’s alienating and dispiriting, not pleasurable, to think you are the only one.) And then to have the rug pulled out from under you because joke’s on you, those fictional girls who are like you aren’t actually girls at all? well. no fun.
(Like remember several years ago when there was all that pop-cult-crit about Sex in the City being about thinly-coded gay men’s lives, and everybody was writing about how those characters weren’t women at all, just men in drag? I have no investment in that show at all but I imagine it sucked for women who did to have to hear that. Every piece of culture in every medium, it’s the same: if a woman is a little too strongly drawn or a little too vivid or a little too far off center, she’s just a man in disguise. Even the most ultra-feminine among us aren’t safe from that.)
That’s what I was thinking! Obviously all the “boy” and “girl” things are couched in many many ages of solidifying stereotypes, but I found I just appreciated that she could be “and” and not “or.” I wasn’t personally interested in tea or hair when I was little, but I did like some other “girl” things, and some “boy” things, and I always got frustrated when characters were all in one or all in another.
Not to say that being all one or all the other is bad! It’s more that it was something I related to personally. I feel like adults either saw me painting and playing with stuffed animals and immediately wanted to put me in tutus, or saw me playing with toy cars and assumed I was a “tomboy” and bought me books about construction. It was nice to see a character be curious and pursue things from multiple areas.
Ok everyone good talk, but does she just like…burn the sheets she has her period on? Does she throw them down the privy, or would someone notice that?
I’m gonna say that she uses reusable cloth pads that she washes herself.
I can verify that Kel does this in the Protector of the Small series, so it’s possible that the precedent was set by Alanna.
“What are you carrying there?” “Oh these rags? I killed a mummy.” “Wow, again? Didn’t you just kill a mummy last month?”
Mama Cooper tells her to “bandage” herself, so I kinda pictured some criss-crossed bandages to save the sheets? There’s still a disposal problem, but she’s always sneaking away, and I figured she could get rid of bloody bandages in the city.
ALSO, given the amount of beating on each other the pages and squires do during training and their leisure time, it might not be that unusual to have some spots of blood on their sheets. If it just happened once or twice I feel like she could get away with the “tore up my hand on my sword”/”bloody nose” excuse.
I believe her manservant dude, whose name I forget, helped her with that.
Coram. Very gruff. Heart of gold though.
I just wanted to check in to say that Tamora Pierce came to give a talk at my women’s college when I was an undergrad, and IT WAS AMAZING. Not only was Tamora Pierce EXACTLY the (delightful) sort of person you would hope she’d be, pretty much everyone in the auditorium was vibrating with giddiness. Unsurprisingly, a lot of women who go to women’s colleges were once middle schoolers who adored Alanna, Kel, et al.
I too saw her speak at my women’s college as an undergrad – I think she made an effort to come to our school’s ComicCon every year or as many years as possible, because she came multiple times while I was there. She’s so wonderfully supportive of her fans! (And yup, I’m pretty sure you can draw a straight line between all the lessons I absorbed from her books and my decision to go to a women’s college.)
Maybe try the Paksenarrion books, by Elizabeth Moon? Usually the run-and-fight high fantasy stuff bores me unto death, but I lovelovelove this series. The main character is basically a more badass version of Brienne of Tarth from GoT, but with more character development and less pining after dumb ol’ Renly.
I just came here to say the same thing! I love Paksenarrion. As I recall the fighting involves clearly scripted maneuvering and strategy, which I (perhaps erroneously) credit to Elizabeth Moon’s time as a Marine.
So for anyone who wants a fantasy book where the magic users are like “YES MAGIC UGH IT IS SO AWESOME AND FEELS GREAT” please see Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
Its seriously fun stuff, there’s like 12 books (I’m on number three), and only women are allowed to use magic because dudes historically fucked it up so bad that they are “gentled” whenever they show the ability to do so. Also, there are wolves and witch school and lots of intrigue.
There are maps, though.
Egwene forever <3
But you’re gonna hit books 6-10 and be like SWEET JESUS CHRIST, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT THE RANDOM TAIREN NOBLE IS WEARING AND WHAT’S GOING ON WITH RAND WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIM IN 900 PAGES GODDAMMIT but then Robert Jordan died and Brandon Sanderson picked up the rest of the series and it got exponentially better. Have you read the Believer article about him after he died? They articulate a lot of my problems with how he wrote women– he creates women who can handily kick ass and then hamstrings them with braid-yanking and man-pining in the worst misogynistic way. Sanderson’s versions of women I wanted to love for so long are just a breath of fresh air. http://www.believermag.com/issues/201010/?read=ar…
Totally agree about Jordan’s characterizations of women. In the first few books of the series, women are badasses. But then he gets into how men and women access the power differently, and for men it’s all about imposing their will upon it, for women it’s all about submission.
I was glad he made things happen, but don’t think Sanderson treated women any better, though? The spanking especially pissed me off big time. Goddamn it, I just re-read the last three books and it pissed me off all over again.
Recent conversation with my boyfella:
Me: So Jordan obviously has a huge spanking fetish, right?
Boyfella: What? No, those characters just needed to be… I mean they were… OH GOD CAN’T UNSEE.
You gotta kinda slog through 7-10, I agree. (Especially 9…I nearly threw it across the room at poor defenseless Mr. September who got me to start reading that series in the first place). It almost felt like Jordan knew he wasn’t going to be able to finish the whole series but that if he wrote it really slowly then his end wouldn’t come.
That article is great! Thanks for the link.
I wrote this and then realised that the dates don’t actually work out for that have to been the case, but I couldn’t get that idea out of my head when reading books 7-10, knowing that he himself didn’t finish the series. I like Sanderson’s books much more than 7-10 and at least equally to 1-6.
Oh the braid pulling. And the first amyrlin’s constant fish puns. It isn’t perfect, for sure.
That article was fantastic, and somehow also hasn’t deterred me from reading the rest? I just love me an expansive world, even if all the women constantly sniff.
Oh man, I was not a fan of Robert Jordan and his lady characters, and I just bought a massive Brandon Sanderson book and then was like, “Oh no he’s finishing Wheel of Time” so it’s good to hear that he actually knows how to write good female characters, beacuse that is pretty much a dealbreaker for me with like, all books.
Yay! Jaya, thanks so much for this! I read and re-read and re-read these books in my pre-teen and early-teen years. Now I ought to pick them up again. Alanna is such an awesome character. And yes George is the best by far.
I reread these recently (they were never as important to me as the Immortals series), and the writing in the first book is pretty stiff! The characters are still fun and compelling, but Pierce definitely improves as she goes along, I think. (Although I will admit that I wasn’t as heartbound to the Aly books as most folks seem to be. She’s a white savior! She wears brownface at one point! nooooooooo)
Yeah, the whole part where she thought no one would notice her because she’d put on some brownface was Not Cool. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the white savior part (if you want to share!), because the books seemed…ok to me in that aspect because the raka leaders were equally, if not more, powerful and instrumental in the revolution and she was just uniquely well qualified to help? I guess I just really want to be able to explain it away so I can love the books without reservation aaand that’s probably not possible.
Here’s where I admit that I didn’t finish reading the first Aly book and never got into the second–so maybe it gets better! The original premise of “a god chooses this white girl to kickstart the native folks’ revolution” just grated on me too much, but I may have just been reading it with an unkind eye because I didn’t like Aly very much in the first place. She’s just not for me!
Totally fair! Yeah, I think especially in the second book it becomes clear that they’ve been orchestrating this revolution for a long time, and she’s a small part of larger action that would have gone on with or without her. I can definitely see why you wouldn’t like it though!
I just recently re-read the Aly books, and I think it’s largely an issue for me because in 5 protagonists in Tortall, none of them are women of color (according to the books’ racial schema) and she’s sending this white chick to go be the savior/instigator of an uprising of people of color. Also, Aly keeps pushing everyone to be nicer to white people and not slaughter them, which at once is a legit point and kind of makes all the raka people look pretty bloodthirsty in a gross way. Also, brownface, completely gross AND stupid — she’s wandering around a very isolated village where everyone knows each other! Even if her brownface weren’t incompetent, they would still be like, “oh shit, that’s a person I don’t know and we’re mad suspicious because we have a lot of secrets.” Like, why couldn’t the book just be about Dove?
Haha, yeah, that move was so stupid on so many levels. Really good points! I hadn’t thought about it, but the only other person who ever stands up to say “we shouldn’t kill all the white people” is Dove, as if none of the other raka people have white family or, you know, aren’t completely bloodthirsty.
Now I’m reimagining the books from Dove’s point of view and that would have been AWESOME.
Right? Like, why do all these books need to be about folks who know and are related to each other? I won’t pretend I’m not super into the little looks at Alanna, Daine, and Kel’s lives that we get in the Aly books but it’s just not needed.
Also if we’re going to do that, can we do a book about Kalasin, PLEASE.
*opens Goodreads in another tab*
*fervently starts typing in book recs from this comments section*
Seriously, though, I have also never been a fan of high fantasy, but this sounds like a series I can get into. Adding Song of the Lioness to my list!
HOW HAS NO ONE YET MENTIONED PATRICIA C. WREDE’S DRAGON SERIES??? Dealing With Dragons, etc. contains one of the most awesome female protagonists ever: Cimorene, a princess who runs away to become a dragon’s librarian because princess life is boring, yo. She’s a complex character in a book full of complex characters, and also full of shortly skewed fairy tale characters (the best kind, am I right?).
Also, one of the best things about Tamora Pierce is that her female characters (including her female protagonists) are not ALL THE SAME. I feel like a lot of writers who decide, hey, I’m going to write a book with a chick main character because let’s be different! end up writing the same character over and over because they only know one kind of girl…
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT UPTHREAD (in the “book recommendations for preteen girls” comment madness) and it is delightful and there is a lot of !!!s. SO GOOD.
God, Dealing with Dragons is THE BEST. I read that series silly as a kid. Also Ella Enchanted. It’s interesting that this is happening around the same time as Mark Reads is doing it, although not surprising since he’s been at it for a while.
Oh no I am only 2 books in, must get the rest of them to finish!!
“For once I just want to read a book about a wizard who spends all her time going “THIS IS THE COOLEST!””
Yet another reason to read Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. #bestbooksever
Isobelle Carmody is the reason I don’t read unfinished series anymore, but her books are great. If you can handle unresolved plots, the Obernewtyn books are the best, but the one-offs are also good, and less frustrating. Supposedly the final Obernewtyn book will be published this year, but I’ve been burned so many times before (book 1 was published in 1987).
I love me some Redwall (was anyone else here in the Redwall Online Community? Hello from Calantorntain!) but I must say…
PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT PRATCHETT
Jaya, I’m glad you liked Alanna! If the fantasy aspects don’t appeal so much, I would NOT recommend any of the other books you mentioned. However, for great characters in fantasy/scifi settings, I strongly recommend Lois McMaster Bujold. She writes both fantasy and scifi and does some of the best character development EVAR. Also, if you like romance, one of her more recent series is basically a romance/fantasy genre blend. The series is The Sharing Knife and the books, in order, are Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon.
Of her other books, I adore The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls (these are probably my favorites of hers but I can’t pick between them! I won’t! You can’t make me!). Also, her scifi books of the Vorkosigan saga are excellent, although there are a lot of them and they are best read in order. You might start with Shards of Honor and Barrayar (sometimes found together in the omnibus Cordelia’s Honor) and see if you like the characters enough to potentially commit to like 17 books. Honestly, I think the best of her scifi books are towards the end of the series (Mirror Dance, Memory, Komarr, A Civil Campaign), but I definitely also think they are best to read having read all the background, so…
Ooh, another fantasy/scifi author with great character development? TANYA HUFF. I really don’t think I can sing her praises enough! She writes across a lot of fantasy/scifi subgenres – epic fantasy, quest fantasy, urban fantasy, horror fantasy, military scifi, steampunk – but all of it is character driven and fantastic. I think my favorites are probably The Fire’s Stone (quest fantasy with friendship, queer romance, and a character who is really into her magic), The Silvered (steampunk with werewolves), and Enchantment Emporium (urban fantasy).
Cannot second this comment enough. I’ve read every book Bujold has written and her deft character development has become my gold standard for genre fiction (yes, you can have all the fun tropes and world-building AND great characterization!). I’ve successfully recommended The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls to non-fantasy fans. The Curse of Chalion is fantastic, but Paladin of Souls holds a special place in my heart because the protagonist is a middle-aged woman–not someone who is normally the hero of a fantasy novel, but she kicks ass all the same.
Yes!! I was waiting for someone to mention LMB! So good. They start slow, though, so you have to give them a real chance. Them you become an addict and Must. Read. Them. All.
Hey Jaya! Love your post. Mark (of Mark Reads/Watches) is going through the Pierce pantheon, and has moved on to some of the following stories that are YAish, which you might like, and focus on the actualization of their female heroines. For the fantasy-deprived 11-year-old in you, there is:
-Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine (skews a bit younger, but seriously awesome), and the
-Enchanted Forest Chronicles, by Patricia C. Wrede (starts with Dealing with Dragons).
Both star an awesome cast of well-rounded characters, with fully-realized female characters at the helm, and they deconstruct the fantasy genre beautifully, as well as do some serious gender-role scrambling (and, you know, they’re funny). One of my favorite, more adult-focused (stand-alone! for once! although you might want more!) stories set in the modern day is War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull- literal rock star heroine, along with various fairies who would eat Tinkerbell for breakfast. I also (somewhat guiltily) love the Bedlam’s Bard series by Mercedes Lackey, but those have a male protagonist, and are also set in the modern day.
Anyway, glad you liked the Lioness series! I admit to feeling a little let down when she didn’t end up with the prince. It seemed like the author and planned it that way and then changed her tune, mostly because it seemed like Jon suffered a weird bout of character assassination. I don’t know for sure, but I might not have picked up on it if I had read them earlier- didn’t actually find these until right after college. And I do still love the series. Anyway, hope you find another fantasy series that you like, but totally understand if it’s not your thing. Hope to hear about it if you do!
Haha, I used to be pretty into the ghost sex scene in Summon The Keeper when I was like, 12.
To be honest, some of those are plugs for things I discovered in early adult(sort of) hood. Not even high fantasy, but just good stuff.
The Alanna books were actually originally written as one longer adult novel, and in that version Alanna did end up with Jon. Tamora Pierce has said that that never quite sat right with her, though, and when she split it up into 4 YA novels she changed the ending to be more true to the characters.
Vindicateeed! That makes a lot more sense now. And it is better for the characters, but you can definitely see the seams a bit where she rewrote the story.
Oh forgot- have you potentially read the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle? They are closer to sci-fi than fantasy, but they are so amazing. Definitely one of my formative book series.
AHHHHH And I completely forgot about Robin McKinley! HOW HOW HOW. Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword are both great, although I think I liked Hero and the Crown better, which is weird because it’s published after the Blue Sword and is a prequel, but whatever. More medieval stuff, and from different countries/current country analogs than Europe.
I also thoroughly enjoyed her Outlaws of Sherwood, which I think is mostly from Robin’s POV, but fleshes Maid Marian out really well. Her Beauty and the beast adaptations are great too- Beauty, and Rose Daughter. Ooooh and Sunshine is one of her slightly more adult books, and is a great creative vampire story.
You should try Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn series! Sci-fi rather than fantasy but great adventure (skylarking in dirigibles! Pirates!) and they’re really about people. Also Temeraire. All the Temeraire. Over and over.
Okay, here are my recommendations for Next Steps:
1. Like most other commenters, I do NOT suggest Tolkien or Star Wars for you. Narnia and Redwall… eh. You should try them but I can’t guarantee you’ll like them.
2. Read more Tamora Pierce! Wild Magic is even more awesome than the Lionness Quartet, IMHO. I find Protector of the Small like, incredibly boring, but YMMV.
3. Read Robin Mckinley! Definitely (and I cannot stress this enough), start with The Blue Sword then read The Hero and the Crown. The latter may be a little hard to track down but I think you’ll really, really like it.
4. This one is a bit of a stretch, but I cannot recommend Diana Wynne Jones enough. She really doesn’t get the love she deserves. She wrote a ton of books, which can be intimidating, but my favorite series are The Dalemark Quartet (which you should read if you like traveling players secretly helping the rebellion) and the Chrestomanci books (which you should read if you like ridiculous men wandering around in elaborate dressing gowns). The Merlin Conspiracy is another really strong book but the the one that comes before it (Deep Magic) is out of print, although it’s not absolutely necessary to read first.
5. ABHORSEN. PLEASE. This one is more adult in that it deals with the undead and grief and a naked man frozen as a masthead. The talking cat’s name is Mogget which is so much better than Faithful, I think we can all agree. Plus he’s kind of evil, so there’s that too.
6. A couple recs that other people mentioned above that I want to second: Pratchett’s Discworld (I always recommend starting with Dragons! Dragons! but that’s because the Night Watch are by far my favorite), Patricia C. Wrede’s Calling on Dragons (you will LOVE Kazhul and Princess Cimorene), Elle Enchanted (forever my standard of Cinderella stories), His Dark Materials (do you enjoy someone calling the Church on their bullshit and a strong female lead? Then this series is for you).
7. Okay, clearly I need to go calm down. My love for these kinds of books has not diminished AT ALL since I was thirteen, I guess.
If you’re into audiobooks, the Abhorsen audiobooks are read by TIM FREAKIN’ CURRY. His Mogget voice gives me chills, it’s perfect.
Diana Wynne Jones!! Yes yes yes.
Read EVERYTHING that Tamora Pierce wrote. 🙂 You gotta go read on Alannas kid… and then the Circle of Magic peeps. 🙂
I suggest… stay away from Tolkien. That’s a LOT heavier than Alanna.
Grab books by David Eddings: The Belgariad, Mallorean. If you liked how the characters like Alanna came to life… you’d love Garion.
also.. books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: The Dragonlance Chronicles. (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning). You’ll fall in love with Tas and Flint and Tanis…
First and foremost, I’d like to second all nominations of Garth Nix, Patricia C. Wrede, Diana Wynne Jones, and David Eddings as excellent fantasy/YA fantasy authors. I was really into Redwall, but that came before Tamora Pierce and the rest.
Secondly, I read Meredith Ann Pierce’s Darkangel Trilogy around the time that I was reading Tamora Pierce’s Immortals series and Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series, and it profoundly affected me. It might’ve been the darkest thing I’d read at that point in my adolescence. Has anyone else read it recently? I’m curious how it might stand up, 13 years later.
Megan Whalen Turner
that is all.
(She only has one series, you can’t miss it. Read The Thief first.)
Man, I love these books. I also love how, in later books, she makes a point to include (very positively presented) queer characters of various stripes, and characters in a variety of relationship models. She is unfailingly sex positive, but relationships tend to happen only after or during the process of kicking ass/finding your place in the world and are not the main focus/goal. Also, none of her characters wind up with the first person that catches their eye. Plus she promotes respect for underdogs and presents a variety of cultures without seeming to fetishize them. Lastly, I went to a public reading Tamora Pierce did a couple years ago and she started by reading in an EXTREME monotone for a few minutes just to troll the audience before her talk really got going. Apparently she makes a habit of doing this, because as she says, “I see the audience, and I see their discomfort, and their discomfort makes me happy.” Just imagine that said with such puckish joy that it’s impossible not to love.
Has anyone that loved loved loved the Lioness and Wild Magic series found any comparable fantasy novels for adults? I mean, I’ve been addicted to Pierce since I was 10, and I’m getting too close to 30 to still be skulking around the YA section… but I haven’t found any adult fantasy series that had a great female lead, didn’t jump around too much (Wheel of time goes for almost entire books without checking back in on the 17,000 storylines it has going, so I end up feeling disconnected from other characters/groups not in the scene at the time), and didn’t have cheaply written romance.
Basically, Alanna and Daine were my BFFs growing up and I want adult BFFs now from books. Any recommendations??
You’re pretty late to the discussion but then so am I!
Have you read Diana Wynne Jones? Most of her books are “YA,” but they are so, so, so good that it doesn’t matter. She does have a couple of adult books, and I highly recommend “Deep Secret” as a starting point.
Brandon Sanderson’s “Way of Kings” (first in a series) features a pretty cool scholar/artist female character, and is also over a 1,000 pages long (not sure if that’s a positive or negative). It does jump around a bit, though.
Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series, starting with “Serpent’s Shadow” are A+ Edwardian fantasy featuring fairy tales (and better, IMO than her Valdemar books, although those also have their charm).
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, starting with “The Eyre Affair” feature a hardboiled literary detective in an alternate 1980s England. The first book is a little hard to get into, but the next few are really fantastic.
Robin McKinley has a bunch of great adult books with fantastic female characters.
Also try Jo Walton! All of her books feature fantastic characters!
I'm a bit late, but there are more books after the second quartet, and slight warning-ish (only since OP mentioned the family is Catholic), but there is some slight queerness going on with one of the characters at that point in the series. Still maybe 19-20 years old, and the character is still a bit confused by her own attraction to another woman, and nothing actually happens beyond her figuring out that she's attracted to her (I'm mostly straight, but I kind of feel like it handled that pretty well for taking place in what seems to be a heteronormative pseudo-medieval world, since it was pretty matter-of-fact and seemed to match my experience of figuring out that I liked people? idk it was a while ago. But the point is that the only reason I want to caution/note that is because of the family)