Now that I’ve finished re-reading Alanna, I’ve moved on to the second quartet in the Tortall universe. It’s mostly been a bedtime read, but I also did a move while reading this quartet, so it also served as a nice comfort read for awhile instead of picking up any of my other ongoing books that required more critical thinking.
Overall, there were fewer problematic under/overtones in this series than The Song of the Lioness (with one notable exception). We get to skip right past having the main character cope with internalized misogyny and get a bold, courageous, confident protagonist across all four books. The pacing and storytelling was lightyears better than SOTL, and they’re just written better in general. That said, my love for Daine is as deep as my love for Alanna. I adore them both, and both series are incredible keystones in the YA genre.
Wild Magic
The Quick & Dirty: Veralidaine Sarrasri, called Daine, is a 13-year-old runaway who finds work herding ponies back to the capital with Onua Chamtong, the horsemistress for the Queen’s Riders. Daine claims that she’s just good with animals and looking for work. Right away, Onua suspects that there’s more to Daine’s story that she’s sharing, but instead of letting a vulnerable, young, country girl get hired by someone more predatory, she hires her on to help bring the new ponies south. On the journey south, they encounter Stormwings – half human, half metal bird creatures – who haven’t been seen in this realm in centuries. We also meet Alanna fully in her role as King’s Champion as she meets up with Daine and Onua in her search for the Stormwings. We also meet Numair Salmalín, a powerful sorcerer who becomes Daine’s teacher. Once Numair appears on the scene, we start to learn more about Daine’s abilities. While she doesn’t have the Gift – the standard magical ability in Tortall – she seems to have an incredible connection to Wild Magic – magic that connects her to animals. As she works with Numair, she expands and deepens her connection and control over Wild Magic to be able to communicate with and heal animals magically. The rest of the story follows her as she accompanies the new recruits for the Queen’s Riders to their summer placement at Pirate’s Swoop. While there, the Swoop is besieged by Carthakis disguised as pirates. This introduces the main threads for the rest of the series – Immortals are entering the human realms likely due to work done by Carthaki mages to tear holes between the realms, and Carthak is doing its level best to disrupt and possibly take over Tortall by sending hostile Immortals among other aggressors to attack Tortall. Against this backdrop, Daine is learning about her magic, growing as a Wild Mage, and building a community of supportive, misfit adults in her new home.
The Wonderful:
- Daine. She’s a wonderful character and it’s a joy to accompany her on her journey. She has had a traumatic exit from a conservative culture and landed amongst Tortall’s most notable. She’s experiencing freedom in ways that are new and exciting, and it’s fun to see her enjoy those freedoms. She’s deeply compassionate, and it’s satisfying that she gets to gain the skills to act on her compassion by learning to heal and communicate with animals.
- The horses! So much of this book involves the ponies, and has a certified horse girl it’s fun to be in that space.
- Onua is a cool character, and an amazing older sister figure for Daine. It’s a shame we don’t get her (much) past book one.
- Like Alanna as a page, Daine works hard for what she learns. She studies both the mundane side of biology, zoology, etc and the magical, and it’s cool to see her hard work pay off.
The Cringeworthy: The one, big problematic plot point doesn’t come to fruition fully until book four, but seeing how it starts in book one was really distracting during this read through. In book four, Daine and Numair become a romantic couple. As of book one, Daine is 13 and Numair is in his 20s. So by time they’re together she’s 16 and he’s supposed to be 27. I don’t know what Pierce’s deal is with age-inappropriate relationships (and grooming – does this count as grooming?), but it’s weird. Throughout all of this book – and others – it’s emphasized over and over again how young Daine is, that she’s a child, that she’s just a girl, etc etc. Her age, in relation to the other characters – including Numair – is made clear. They are not peers. She is a student and a child.
Wolf-Speaker
The Quick & Dirty: About a year after the first book, Daine has been summoned by her old wolf pack to help them stop the destruction of their home. Daine and Numair travel to the north of Tortall, near the City of the Gods to respond to the summons from the wolves. The pack has settled in the Long Lake Valley after fleeing Daine’s old village. The valley has everything they want and no other pack to fight over territory. However, the resident humans have started undertaking widespread destruction – logging, mining, and all of the air, noise, and water pollution that accompanies it. This has made life harder for the pack, and they’ve asked Daine to come stop it. Daine and Numair, accompanied by Cloud, Kitten, and the other horses arrive in the valley to see what it happening and what can be done. Shortly after their arrival they go to meet the nobles that own and oversee this fief. Over the course of the evening, it becomes clear that this valley is Carthak’s next attempt at disrupting Tortall. A few of the Carthaki emperor’s pet mages are in town, and while their specific plot is still unclear, it is clear that nefarious things are afoot. Numair heads away from the valley – it is blocking magical communications – to get a message to the king. While he’s gone, the valley is completely sealed off under a magical dome, leaving Daine, Cloud, and Kitten to fend for themselves. Throughout the story, Daine deepens her understanding and ability to use Wild Magic in exciting new ways. She makes new friends and allies across a variety of species – mortal and Immortal – even as she navigates overcoming her personal biases to do so. With the help of the wolves and other residents of the valley, she must figure out how to thwart Carthak’s plans while most of Tortall’s fire power is locked outside of the valley.
The Wonderful:
- Daine and Maura – Their dynamic is fun. Watching Daine struggle to maintain her status as the older girl without resorting to nastiness or pettiness that is so often portrayed in relationships between girls in fiction is amusing.
- Daine learning to overcome her biases – that Stormwings (and other “bad” Immortals) aren’t just monsters and that saving the Valley will be more successful by including everyone with a stake in it – not just humans is important. It’s satisfying to watch a character confront things they were wrong about and to learn from new experiences.
- The hunt for Yolane is so incredibly satisfying. If only karma IRL was that direct.
The Cringeworthy: For most of the book, Numair is separated from Daine – which is just fine by me. But, there is a similar tone to their relationship as the first. She’s his student, who is a child. She’s 14 in this book. He’s older, holds high status as a personal friend to the King, King’s Champion, and Tortall’s most connected, and the literal most powerful mage in Tortall (and maybe anywhere). Things are kept platonic throughout this book, but knowing what’s coming still loomed large for me.
Emperor Mage
The Quick & Dirty: Another year has passed and Daine, Numair, Alanna, Gareth the Younger, Duke Gareth (he’s still alive?), and a few others that form a Tortallan delegation are heading to Carthak for peace accords. This is their one chance to achieve a diplomatic peace with Carthak or it’s likely that the Carthaki Empire will throw all of it’s military and magical might at Tortall. Daine has been included on this delegation because the Carthaki Emperor’s personal aviary of birds have been getting ill and no one knows how or why. Daine’s role is to heal them and hopefully gain some good will for the talks. Even as the delegation arrives to Carthak, we get hints that the gods are displeased with the empire. The badger god visits Daine on the ship, urging her to turn around and go home, but when that fails he ends up bestowing a mysterious new gift on her. The story happens adjacent to the peace talks. Daine is mostly left on her own to either care for the birds, or visit the city with the emperor’s nephew and heir, Kaddar. Through her visits to the city, and visits from a suspicious old crone, it’s clear that the empire is unwell. Where there should be monsoons, there’s drought. The Emperor demands that any worship that would have been offered to the gods, go to him. Tithes are redirected to taxes to fuel the armies and navies. When the gods offer warnings, the emperor deflects. All Daine and the Tortall delegation hope is that they can wrap up the treaty and head home before the shit hits the fan, but doesn’t quite work out like that.
The Wonderful:
- The Graveyard Hag, the crone goddess of the Empire. She’s a bit of a trickster and just a sly old lady. Such fun.
- Daine showing up a bunch of ding-dong rude boys by out-shooting them on the archery field.
- Also – This book houses one of my favorite sequences in a book, probably ever. Spoilers ahead for the last few chapters. Daine has woken up from being drugged and kidnapped, she’s released from captivity by her pal Zek, and she’s gotten confirmation that the dreams she had while knocked out were real. The emperor has tanked the peace talks and blamed Daine, the Tortallans have left, Kitten has been kidnapped, and Numair has been executed. Daine finally puts the Hag’s powers to use, but not the way the Hag would have. Daine has no interest in raising an army of the human dead. Instead she raises the dinosaurs from the Hall of Bones to raze the palace to the ground. She accompanies the dinosaurs on their rampage to ensure that no part of the palace is unscathed in her hunt for Ozorne. It is extremely satisfying to watch a teenage girl have the power to cause that much destruction.
The Cringeworthy/Problematic: The weird undertones between Numair and Daine really get their sea legs in this book. While again they don’t spend a lot of time together – he’s in the talks, she’s with the birds – their few interactions are odd. At some point he mentions how beautiful and grown up she looks. He gets weirdly over protective of her with Kaddar – insinuating that Kaddar is trying to bang her without marrying her, and low-key threatening him. It’s very “my dad greeted my prom date by holding a rifle” energy. Daine becomes aware that Numair has sex (with actual adults), and is jealous. Even the emperor gets involved by noticing that Numair loves Daine – hinting that it’s more than just a respectful feeling between teacher and student – and needling Numair by suggesting that he’s schtuping his very underage student. Something that apparently gets insinuated not infrequently, and it’s never bothered Numair before. Ew.
Besides the grooming(?) subplot, the inclusion of slavery also gets a really weird treatment. Carthak is known to be one of the slave nations in this world, and that’s different and uncomfortable to the Tortallans. But, the way that Daine’s perspective on slavery gets portrayed is off. She holds a pretty black and white opinion on slavery – that it’s wrong – in book 2 when it’s ogres being forced to mine. But, when we get to Carthak and human slaves are everywhere, her opinions are now, “well, I think it’s wrong, but my Ma always told me you can’t tell others how to keep house.” Yikes. There’s a tiny scene at the end where she advocates for abolition to Kaddar, but overall it tends towards the Hermione/House Elves treatment of slavery. It just could have been left out of the book and the story wouldn’t have suffered.
The Realms of the Gods
The Quick & Dirty: While Ozorne is no longer the Emperor, he’s still causing problems for everybody, everywhere by waging wars on a variety of nations – Tortall chief among them – with other Immortals at his side. Early on, he throws some nasty, weird critters at Daine and Numair who only barely escape doom by being sucked into the Divine Realms by Daine’s parents. Daine is reunited with her Ma and gets to meet her Da, a god of the hunt, for the first time. They spend a few days recuperating at her parents’ house before convincing Sara and Weiryn that they really do need to be getting back to the mortal realms. Daine’s parents suggest heading for the Dragonlands so that the dragons can take them home, but they cannot accompany Daine and Numair for *reasons*, but the Badger god and platypus god can. So, Daine, Numair, Badger, and Broadfoot, along with a few other Little Guys journey across the Divine Realms to the Dragonlands in order to be returned to the mortal realms to help stop the war.
The Wonderful:
- Daine is just simply never to be fucked with and it is excellent. She’s got strong opinions, she’s not ever super afraid to share them, and that’s that. She’s also not afraid of some light, very justified murder, and is super capable and kind of ruthless about it. What a delight.
- She’s also deeply kind and caring. When the Little Guys, who are mysterious creatures, show up, she immediately befriends them with cheese and prevents her Da from shooting one just for existing on his property.
- There’s a platypus god, just because.
The Cringeworthy: The grooming subplot finally comes in for a landing. Towards the back half of the book, there’s some harrowing near-death events, and then they finally become romantic in response to being relieved they’re both alive. Daine finds out that Numair has been keeping a magical GPS tracker bracelet to keep tabs on her – which is somehow portrayed as romantic and not horrifying. Numair discloses that he’s had feelings for a while, but didn’t make a move previously in case that manipulated her into believing she had feelings for him. Hm. They dance around the age difference and ultimately the book shrugs it off. There’s a quick interaction at the end where Ma refers to Daine as “being an adult now”, and YET Daine is always referred to as “the girl” and Numair as “the man”. Ah, yes, a clear sign of a healthy, age-appropriate romantic relationship – one of them is a girl (child) and the other a man (adult). FFS.
Overall
The improvement in writing between Song of the Lioness and The Immortals is incredible. Each book in the Immortals tells a clear, engaging story and shows the growth of the main character. As with Alanna, I adore Daine. She’s sharp, compassionate yet deadly, and can shapeshift and talk to animals – how cool is that?! (Except for the dating-an-adult-man thing, she’s an excellent role model. Which, I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, I did not notice or care about the age difference when I first read these as a middle-schooler. I remember being a bit surprised by the romance, but I did not clock that Numair was properly an adult. So, there’s that, I guess.)
I love that each quartet builds on the world of Tortall, maintains the previous main characters as side characters, and creates a rich tapestry of familiar faces and new experiences as the world grows and changes. It’s a delight to have an increasingly inter-generational cast of characters to help the reader stay grounded in the world even as our knowledge of the world expands.
