The Daughter of the Lioness duet is the final set in the Tortall series that I will be re-reading. There’s also the Beka Cooper books that I’ve never read and the first of the unfinished Numair series, but I’ll be moving away from Tortall after this.
Until this point, we’ve been moving further and further away from the Mary Sue of it all. At the beginning we had Alanna. Alanna was imbued with skills and abilities that are unbelievable for any eleven-year-old to possess, like defeating a plague that even the kingdom’s most skill healers could not cure. Then we had Daine whose strengths and abilities, while fantastical, were mostly explained through her divine parentage and Wild Mage. Then we had Kel who was incredibly proficient in martial arts, but was also grounded and we watched her progression through years of training and growth. Now, we’re straight back into Mary Sue territory. The premise relies on the fact that a sixteen-year-old is the best option for a resistance spymaster because she’s been learning spy craft for “sixteen years”. Okay. That said, it is fun to see the protagonists do unbelievable things.
Trickster’s Choice
The Quick & Dirty: Alianne (Aly) of Pirate’s Swoop is the daughter of Alanna the Lioness and George Cooper, the former King of Thieves and Tortall’s current spymaster. Her mother considers her a bit of a layabout with wasted potential, and her father won’t send her to do on-the-ground spy work she actually wants to do. When Alanna returns home for a break from the ongoing war with Scanra, Aly quickly decides that she wants to be out from under the watchful eye of her mother. Aly takes her small boat with the intention of sailing down the coast to stay with relatives for a few weeks and then returning before her mother heads back to Scanra. Her plan is thwarted when she runs into slave catchers and is kidnapped and taken to the Copper Isles to be sold as a slave. Once in the Copper Isles, her plans for escape are foiled by the god Kyprioth showing up to offer her a wager. If she can keep the exiled Balitang family alive for a summer, then he’ll help convince her father to give her real spy work. As she takes on this challenge, she slowly discovers and gets involved in a plot from the indigenous peoples to stage a revolution, take back the throne from the colonizers that have held it for 300 years, and install a half-indigenous Queen – who happens to be the oldest Balitang daughter.
Trickster’s Queen
The Quick & Dirty: Aly was successful in keeping (most of ) the Balitang family safe through the summer, and the family stayed the autumn and winter in exile. Now they have been invited/ordered to return to the capital and back to court. Aly has decided to extend her relationship with Kyprioth and the raka (the indigenous folks from the Isles) and help put a half-raka Queen on the throne. She has now fully taken on the role of spymaster for the rebellion and is responsible for collecting intel, spreading misinformation, and causing trouble for the throne. Meanwhile things across the Isles are starting to unravel. Raka are rising up all across the Isles to fight their colonizers. The crown has landed with a three-year-old boy while the country is actually being run by a pair of power-hungry and cruel regents. The time has never been better for a coup. However, the young woman that the rebellion has staked its future on is a tempestuous teenager who has no idea the efforts that are being made on her behalf to put her on the throne.
Overall
As with the other protagonists and stories in the Tortall series, Aly is an interesting and fun character to accompany. She is clever, cheeky, and charming. She is cut from the same cloth as George, and it is a delight to watch her deploy her prodigious skills in doing sneaky shit. The rest of the cast of characters are also a rich, interesting tapestry. Although these books also take an interesting pro-land-back stance, there is still some paternalistic nonsense that comes out through Aly and the way that she interacts with the rebellion’s elders in particular. These are probably the strongest writing and storytelling of the Tortall series books, and another excellent read. I would highly recommend to any readers – whether YA aged or not.
