For young adults and old adults alike | Alanna

The best of all worlds. | Alanna | Tamora Pierce

books:


	• Alanna Tamora Pierce Oxford University Press, 1984 - 242 pages average customer review:based on 577 reviews
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highly recommended

Amazing Start to A Wonderful Series

Ten-year-old Alanna of Trebond, and her twin brother Thom of Trebond were obviously born the wrong sex. For you see, Alanna wants nothing more than to be a knight, protecting the good of mankind, and swinging a sword around; whereas Thom wants nothing more than to be a Sorcerer, conjuring up spells, and learning the art of magic. Unfortunately, Alanna is female, so she must be sent to the convent to learn magic, while Thom must be sent to the palace to begin his journey to knighthood. That is, until Alanna comes up with the idea for the two of them to switch places. Hence, disguised as a girl, Thom heads off to the convent, and Alanna, disguised as her male counterpart, heads off to the palace, where she will begin her training as a page, and, hopefully, over the years, move up to apprentice. However, Alanna is unprepared for the amount of work that comes along with being a knight. Throughout her journey of learning the requirements for battle, she must also learn to distinguish friend from foe, and control her many flowering emotions.

I have seen the ALANNA series in bookstores for years, but had never been sure as to whether or not I would be interested in reading about a young girls road to knighthood. However, when I opened ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE and began reading the first chapter, I was hooked. I purchased the entire quartet, and devoured the first installment within a day. Alanna is an enchanting character, who is brave, heroic, and interesting. The many hardships she must handle on a day to day basis is intriguing, and really makes the reader sympathize with her character. Overall, this is a marvelous start to a wonderful new series that will be enjoyed by all who adore fantasy/science fiction books.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

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For young adults and old adults alike

I found this book in one of my quests for new reading material in my old high school's library. The library was old, and the book hardly looked unique with its eighties' style cover... but then I started to read it.

This book is about drive and ambition. Any girl reading this book, including my past 14 year old self, feels like she can do anything after reading it. There's palace intrigue, butt-kicking, a villain, a king of thieves and a prince. There's friendship and growing older, and a wonderful passage of time that feels as if the years are slipping away as fast as they are for Alanna.

I reread this book so often that one day I just went out at bought it, soon followed by the others. No matter how old you get, or how grown up and accomplished you feel, this book is so easy to pick up again and again... reliving the years that fly by so fast and everything seems confusing at the time, but so simple later. This book is a huge chunk of my heart.

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The best of all worlds.

I must have read these four novels by Tamora Pierce at least eight times. I loved them growing up and I love them still, although I am not nearly so pleased with her more recent work. I'm glad that she is successful but the quality seems to have sharply fallen off.

Anyway, this series is about a ten yr old girl named Alanna and her twin brother Thom who are being sent away to be educated. Thom is meant to become a knight and Alanna to go to a convent school. Neither twin is happy with the situation so they forge new letters of introduction from their father and Thom goes off to the convent/monastery to learn to become a Mage and Alanna is disguised as "Alan" and goes to the castle to become a knight.

The books follow her adventures while at school then after she is ordained and they are so engaging and wonderful with many memorable characters not to mention a strong female role model. I reccommend this series to anyone, but most especially anyone with a ten yr old daughter who might fall in love with these books the way I did.

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Alanna the First Advanture

The auther Tamora Pierce ia an amazing writer. She adds characters that you will love. This book will switch your brain into the midevil fantasy she writes about.
A girl named Alanna wanted to be a knight. But to be a knight she had to cut her hair like a boy. She would travel to Tortall where boys train to be knights. First she has to save a life, then travel to a spooky city. Her body is still used to being a girl so along the way she goes through girl like situations. To find out what happens in her adventure, read this book.

Violet eyes to die for

There is a right way and a wrong way to go about reading Tamora Pierce's Tortallan tales. I began the wrong way. Not knowing the multiple quartets within the series, I oh-so-innocently began by reading the very well written but exceedingly complex, "Trickster's Choice". Now I know that that particular book is pretty much the thirteenth book in a series that began here with "Alannna: The First Adventure". So I have returned to the very beginning (a very nice place to start) with this tale of a girl's rebellion against an unjust system. I found I enjoyed the book exceedingly, and was delighted to find that the titles have been repackaged with beautiful new covers so as to entice a whole new troop of fans (covers that, oddly, Amazon.com doesn't advertise openly). But I was also shocked to find that the intricate complexities I encountered in "Trickster's Choice", weren't necessarily there because of the twelve books preceding it. Even "Alanna" contains some high politicking in an obviously well-thought out world. It makes for an entrancing read.

Alanna and her twin Thom have a problem. Thom is about to be sent off to become a knight while Alanna is to be trained in the art of girlishness and sorcery. Trouble is, Thom is the one who likes magic and Alanna is the one who wants to fight. The solution to the problem is simple. The two need only switch places with some forged letters and willing servants in tow. In this way, Thom goes off to join a monastery and learn sorcery and Alanna (disguised as a boy) enters the world of knighthood. She begins as a page and works as hard as possible to prove herself. Sometimes that means taking on bullies or besting her fellows in a bit of swordplay. Other times it means befriending thieves and princes alike and even using her gifts to heal royalty of sickness. All this work may mean that great things are to come from Alanna but only time will tell if she gets through her trials intact.

Alanna is a difficult heroine to love in some ways. Essentially humorless (a fact that most differentiates her from her daughter in "Trickster's Choice"), she isn't much of a thinker. More, a doer. But do she does, and well. Pierce has no qualms with starting the tale and then rushing into the story headlong. You're literally two pages into the book when Alanna comes up with the idea of the switch. From then on the book's a whirlwind series of tests and trials for the diminutive young lady. It's funny, but the book that this title reminded me the most of, as I read it, was "Ender's Game", by Orson Scott Card. An odd comparison but not entirely insane, if you think about it.

Concerned parents will gasp in horror as this book matter-of-factly confronts things like puberty and procreation. Ho hum. In many ways, this might be the best way to get boys to understand the complexities of female menstruation. Don't let the warnings fool you, though. This book's tame tame tame. I have it in the children's section of the library in which I work and I wouldn't move it anywhere else if you asked me to. When it comes down to it, this is just a great adventure story for those boys and girls that want something classy but a little different from the average page-becoming-a-knight fare out there.

It was originally written in 1983, but "Alanna: The First Adventure", hasn't aged a jot. A must-read for anyone willing to tackle the immense Tortallian world of Tamora Pierce. A fine fun romp. Not to be missed by serious fantasy fans.

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