IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER THREE: THE PRINCE’S SQUIRE, OR, GEORGE GIVES AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT, JONATHAN HAS THE SEX, AND ALANNA IS NEARLY KILLED, AGAIN

It’s the night before Jonathan’s birthday, and the whole Lower City is celebrating.  Alanna (with Faithful) is there visiting George, and the thieves make fun of her for not drinking.  Silly thieves, this is a Tamora Pierce book.  You can only drink in Tamora Pierce books if you are a hilarious alcoholic!

George takes her up to his room and asks about her lessons with Duke Gareth, because he is still employing people at the Palace to watch her every move and for some reason that… isn’t creepy?  I guess?  Okay.  Instead of being disturbed and annoyed, like a reasonable person, Alanna laughs it off and says George should start working as a spy in Tusaine.  George, to her surprise, says he intends on doing just that, and warns her to conceal her source.  He then gives her a package send to him from Thom, which contains a jewel-studded silver mail shirt for Jonathan’s birthday and a letter for her.  In it Thom is his usual dickweed self and says that people have been making inquiries about the two of them in the City of the Gods.  She asks George about it and he says that she has twice been followed into the Lower City by Palace men.  They didn’t make it as far as the marketplace.  I guess that’s one upside to having a known criminal hire thugs to follow you around.

George changes tack suddenly and asks her how old she is.  When she replies that she’s nearly fifteen, he’s like, “Ohohoho, that is marrying age in the Lower City.”  He is really vying for the Tortall’s Creepiest Bachelor award today, isn’t he?  Alanna is suitably freaked out (FINALLY. GOD.) and is like “haha George, I’m not going to get married, please let go of me now!”  George complies and briefly acts like less of a weirdo… until he walks her home and force-kisses her when her hands are full.  She is, again, suitably freaked out and says she should have stabbed him, and he’s all “lol no.”  When he leaves Alanna asks Faithful why he didn’t stop him.  His reply?

I’m not here as a chaperone, the cat replied.  Besides, I didn’t want to interrupt.  You seemed to be enjoying yourself.

Wow.  This did not bother me enough when I was eleven.

The next day there is a big ol’ Court ball for Jonathan’s birthday.  Tortallans, man, any excuse for a party.  Alanna, being the World’s Tiniest Buzzkill, is sulking on a windowsill when Gary finds her and tells her to come meet the new resident hottie.  (Alanna’s automatic response: “I’m too young for girls.” jfc BE GAYER, ALANNA.)  Said hottie is named Delia of Eldorne, and we can immediately tell she is an eeeeevil slut because she has dark hair and is wearing a low-cut green dress instead of the customary white/pastel palette of good, virginal court maidens.

Jonathan is clearly infatuated with her, and she is just as clearly interested in making Alanna uncomfortable/Jon jealous by dancing with our favourite redheaded pipsqueak.  Alanna mentions that she feels “odd” whenever she compliments Jonathan, and Myles—who is, as usual, drunk—notices her jealousy.  He tries to sympathise by telling her that some women like to break up male friendships.  Jeez, if it wasn’t obvious that Myles knows about Alanna’s vagina issue this would sound so much like a kindly open-minded mentor giving his closeted homosexual protégé a pep talk.

The seasons turn, as they are wont to do, and the Tortallan winter is harsh as balls.  Alanna, who hates the cold even more than she hates spiders, remembers the Great Southern Desert in the wistful longing way you remember the best sex of your life.  Speaking of which: she also starts having the sexy thoughts about Jonathan.  Specifically, about crawling into be with him to “warm up,” and by “warm up” we mean “get some hot prince-on-squire action.”  The harsh winter means that Trebond is suffering, and Alanna gets some practice running a fief by sending food and warm clothing up north to relieve her people.  Thom, the actual heir of Trebond, is presumably too busy casting spells and being a dick to bother with that kind of earthly nonsense.

The squires are sent out for an impromptu camping trip in January, and Alanna deals with her hatred of the cold by digging a little snow burrow and warming herself with her Gift.  She takes Faithful with her—seriously? How are her training masters okay with this?—and the two of them chill (heh) for the night until Alanna is randomly attacked by a boar.  When she stabs it it squeals and vanishes.  Someone is definitely trying to kill her with magic, but Alanna refuses to tell anyone, because she has no proof.  Damn, girl, there must be a spell someone can cast to trace this sort of shit—then again, these books were written prior to TPierce’s interest in procedural crime dramas, so maybe not.  In any case, Alanna tells no one, because the Trebond knights are known for their intelligence.

So in addition to the cold, intrusive sexy thoughts, and murderous boar-illusions chasing her down in the forest, Alanna is all cranky about Delia of Eldorne, who is really hot-n-cold and gives Jonathan the boyband feelings.

No, not those.

That's more like it.

Sometimes they bone and sometimes she ignores him and it makes Jonathan impossible to live with.  (He even writes poems.  POEMS.  I’d really love to read one of derpy ol’ Jon’s poems—I’m imagining something like “Delia, oh Delia, you make my young heart feel-ia.”)  The situation is not improved by Delia trying to make Jonathan jealous by making Alanna pay special attention to her at parties.  At one point Jonathan accuses Alanna of “using” Delia to make her masquerade more believable, which, trust me, dude, everyone just thinks she’s gay.

One of the few squires at Court who is not infatuated with Delia is Alex, AKA Duke Roger’s former squire.  As a result Alanna starts hanging out with him more—probably the lack of poetry is a relief—and one day they decide to have a friendly duel.  You know, see which of them is better at killing people with pointed sticks.  Grand, that’ll end beautifully.

(Unrelated: Alanna refers to Alex as her “dark friend,” which both reminds me of The Wheel of Time and strikes me as a wee bit racist.  Damn, Alanna.)

They duel in one of the practice rooms, and in a crazy twist that no one could have seen coming, Alex tries to kill the shit out of Alanna and ends up breaking her collarbone.  The duel is stopped by Myles, which seems to snap Alex out of some kind of trance; he apologizes profusely to Alanna and then leaves.  Myles says that Faithful dragged him from his chambers to the room in which Alex was trying to make Trebond kebab.  Myles and Faithful are both like “yo he was trying to kill you, maybe you should do something about that?”  And Alanna, true to form, is like, “I have no proof.”

Um, okay, maybe you don’t have proof that Alex was put into a trance by Duke Roger and sent to kill you, or whatever, but he broke your collarbone.  And you have a witness (two if you count your talking cat, which maybe you shouldn’t because people might think you are on shrooms).  You definitely have proof that Alex tried to kill you.  Maybe you should, you know, do something about that?

Will Alanna keep being a dumbass?  (Yes.)  Will Jonathan keep channeling JC Chasez?  (Yes.)  Will more people try to kill our pigheaded heroine?  (Is that even a question?)  Find out next time in CHAPTER FOUR: A CRY OF WAR, OR, ALANNA GOES ON A ROAD TRIP AND GETS FORCE-KISSED BY GEORGE AGAIN, JESUS, GEORGE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER TWO: DUKE ROGER OF CONTE, OR, IN WHICH DIPLOMACY IS VERY DIFFICULT, A DUEL IS HELD, AND SYMBOLIC CHESS IS SYMBOLIC

Aw, yeah, shit’s about to get political up in here.

Alanna’s bumping along very happily—Prince’s squire, Goddess-chosen, magical cat, basically living the anime dream—when suddenly a metric fuckton of delegates from neighboring kingdom Tusaine show up to cramp her style.  Apparently the king of Tusaine is considering retaking the Drell River Valley on the border between the two kingdoms, and King Roald hates war so much he is basically considering rolling over and taking it.  Or, like, not taking it.  Letting them do it.  Whatever.  As Jonathan’s squire, Alanna is in the thick of all the diplomatic fol-de-rol, which is why she happens to be at the party where one of the ambassador’s knights, Dain of Melor, pooh poohs Tortallan swordsmanship.  “Fencing!” he sneers.  “I’ve seen what you call ‘fencing.’  Back home we call it dancing!”

The Ambassador of Tusaine, Mikal, apologizes for Dain, but then ruins it by being all “lol you guys sure do suck wrt fencing tho.”  Diplomacy is just really hard, okay?  Everyone is very tense, and there’s this little moment in the background:

“Raoul, standing by the hearth, was shifting slowly into a fighting stance.  His coal-black eyes were snapping with fury, and he gripped his sword hilt with a white-knucled hand… Frantically she signaled Douglass to look at his knight-master.  Her friend hurried over to Raoul and shoved a wineglass into the big knight’s hand, talking softly and quickly.  After a second’s hesitation, Raoul released his hilt with a sigh.”

Given Raoul’s later admission of a drinking problem in his youth, this tidbit is kind of awkward and sad.  How do you stop Raoul from kicking up a stink?  Get him drunk!  A+ squire skills, Douglass.

Jonathan says that even Tortallan pages and squires know how to hold their own against a full knight, and proposes that Dain fence one to see for himself, volunteering Alanna.  Dain blusters a bit about all the duels he’s been in and all the bandits he’s killed and how SHORT Alanna is before finally throwing in the towel and agreeing.  They all retire to the fencing gallery, but not before Alanna turns to look at her good buddy Alex and notices a strange expression on his face—almost as though he's eager.  Could that be important?  Nah, he’s just Duke Roger’s former squire, it’s probably nothing.

Myles is freaked out about the fact that Alanna intends on dueling a man who’s a head taller than she is.  Alanna points out, quite logically, that if she refused to fight people who were taller than her there would be no point in trying for her shield at all.  Faithful advises her to let Dain be stupid and not to get herself killed.  (Oh, yeah, this is how we’re told that Faithful can talk, by the way.  It’s just kind of slipped in there.  I guess once the Goddess herself shows up to give you costume jewelry a talking cat ain’t that big a deal.)  Dain and Alanna stretch and bow, and the duel begins.

Dain is both taller and stronger than Alanna, and spends a lot of time taunting her in hopes that she’ll become unnerved and slip up.  She doesn’t, instead watching his body language and movements for feints and openings.  They both quickly become sweaty and gross, and Alanna tries to wipe her face while Dain recovers from a stumble, thereby giving him the opportunity to lunge at her arm.  He gets first blood, and she’s prepared to sheath her sword since he’s won by the rules, but instead he starts trying to stab her in the chest.  Sporting of him.  Everyone’s yelling “foul!” like it’s a goddamn soccer game and Duke Gareth comes toward them with a sword to try to end it, but Alanna shakes her head to call him off.  You don’t stop Alanna of Trebond from fighting a broski just because he’s trying to stab her in the chest, dude.  She disarms Dain, careful not to slip in her own blood, and tells him that he was stupid and that she’s only not killing him because she’s a better knight than him.  Okay, Alanna, 1) you are not a knight yet and 2) the dude may have tried to stab you in the chest, but before that?  According to the rules of first blood, he WON.  So you’ve basically proved both that Tusaine knights are better swordsmen than their Tortallan counterparts AND that Tortallan knights are too wussy to kill people.  Good show.

Myles comes to Alanna’s room while she’s cleaning up after the duel and asks why she didn’t kill him.  Her response:

“He was stupid.  If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn’t have time to sleep.”

Snerk.  Myles says that the Ambassador would have understood if she’d killed him, and Alanna says that just because he (Dain) behaved badly is no reason for her (Alanna) to behave badly.  She then gets all teary and asks why Myles is picking on her.  He hugs her and tells her she’s a good lad.  It’s all very Degrassi.

In a very non-Degrassi scene not so very far away, Duke Roger is playing chess with himself and thinking about Alanna.  It’s all very wanky and exposition-y, so let me sum up: the Duke expected Alanna to be easy to control but she’s not; he doesn’t understand why she and Jonathan came back from the Black City; he thinks a god is protecting Jonathan, and possibly Alanna too; and now it turns out that Alanna is ace at waving pointy sticks around, dayum.  His conclusion: He has to find a natural-looking way to kill her before she waves a pointy stick at his face.  And also Jonathan, the King, the Queen, and anyone else who might get in his way.

How many more duels will Alanna have to fight?  Will the conflict with Tusaine escalate?  Why is Duke Roger playing chess by himself, doesn’t he have any friends?  Find out next time in CHAPTER THREE: THE PRINCE’S SQUIRE, OR, GEORGE GIVES AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT, JONATHAN HAS THE SEX, AND ALANNA IS NEARLY KILLED, AGAIN.

IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, CHAPTER ONE: THE LADY IN THE FOREST, OR, ALANNA REHASHES HER BACKSTORY, MEETS A DEITY, AND RECEIVES A MAGICAL CAT

I’ve got to just come out and say this: I have never, never liked In the Hand of the Goddess.  I know it’s a fan favourite, and I know it features the consummation of Jon and Alanna’s gay relationship, and stuff, but my God is it dull.  In a nutshell: “I think the Duke is evil but I have no proof.” “But what about all these evil things he’s done?” “NO PROOF I SAY. Also there’s a war or something, Iunno.”  DULL.  As well, it is the book that kicks off my hatred of Jonathan (although it’s The Woman Who Rides Like a Man and, later, First Test that really put on the finishing touches).  A note to all would-be writers: If you make a romance one of the central story arcs of your book, please make sure both parties are basically likable and do not dedicate about fifty percent of their page time to temper tantrums.

Right.  With that out of the way, let’s start the book!

When last we saw our heroine she had just defeated a tribe of immortal wizard-demon-things, showed a member of the royal family her unmentionables, and been named squire to a prince of the realm.  In the Hand of the Goddess opens with Squire Alanna riding through inclement weather in an unnamed forest with a three-hundred-year-old document for Sir Myles, because not rain nor sleet nor snow nor gloom of night will stay this vertically-challenged ginger androgyne from the swift completion of her appointed document-related duties.  (By the way, that document is not mentioned again.  Given Myles’s interest in the Old Ones’s cooking habits, I have to assume it is a centuries-old grocery list.)  As she rides she thinks about her past four years masquerading as a boy, conveniently summarizing the entire first book for any readers who skipped it.  If only Tamora Pierce had used that strategy for the Beka books.  At one point a spider lands on Alanna’s glove and she freaks out, because apparently she is terrified of spiders.  Funny, I don’t remember that being in the- ah, right, she goes into the Chamber of the Ordeal at the end of this book, need to get some extra fears up in hurr.  She spots a willow tree with very thick branches and decides to camp under it for the night; she’s just about to turn in when all of a sudden there is a tiny black kitten staggering out of the bushes to meet her.  A tiny black kitten with purple eyes.  She is momentarily concerned, thinking the cat is supernatural, but is pretty much immediately swept away in a sea of “d’awwww lookit his little pawsies.”  Which is valid.  Kittens are fucking precious.

Look at that shit.  Do you give a fuck about the supernatural right now?  I don’t.

She is about to fall asleep again (this time with a cat for company), when suddenly she starts sneezing, as she does when magical things happen.  (Dude, this is Tortall, magical things happen like every three pages.)  A tall woman in a cloak and hood has materialized by her campfire, asking if she can take shelter with her under the tree.  Alanna pretty quickly realizes that something’s up, because the chick sounds familiar and her face is “too perfect to be quite real.” I’m sure you’re supposed to imagine her as incredibly beautiful, but this just reads as Uncanny Valley territory to me.

This woman is watching you in the shower.

But yeah, turns out that Alanna's mysterious visitor is the Goddess, AKA the female head of the Tortallan pantheon and owner of that weird voice she's been hearing in her head for the past few years.  Just takin’a day off, comin’ to the woods to visit her Chosen One, ykhig.  Alanna is suitably unnerved, which prompts the Goddess to start a plot-propelling discussion of all the things she is afraid of.  The first one is the Chamber of the Ordeal, the room in which all Tortallan squires spend an overnight vigil prior to knighthood; Alanna mentions Jonathan’s face after his own Ordeal, saying he “looked like some part of him died in there.”  It was the nice part, Alanna, just so you know what happened when he starts yelling at you a book from now.

The mention of Jonathan leads in a totally natural and not at all asspully way to a discussion of Alanna’s second fear, her “fear of love.”  The Goddess is all “I don’t get why you hate the idea of boning so much, Alanna, boning is awesome.”  (She says this in a very floaty “warmth of a man’s touch” way, but she means boning.)  Alanna says that she doesn’t want to be distracted by love; she also mentions that her father was deeply in love with her mother, and when he died (oh yeah btw that happened, okay) he was still calling for her even though she’d been dead for years.  She says she doesn’t want to give any part of herself away, because her father did that and he never got himself back.  That's sad and stuff, but what I'm curious about is how did she handle reading he father's will?  Would anyone have noticed that it listed a son and a daughter, or would they just think Lord Trebond was a bit addled as usual?  Or did he stay true to his jerkass self and just not mention her?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Her third fear, according to the Goddess, is “Roger, Duke of Conte.”  What, not spiders?  She starts yelling about how the Duke caused the Sweating Sickness and told Jonathan to go to the Black City, and the Goddess nods along and is like “yes that is all true.”

… Wait.  You’re a central figure of the Tortallan pantheon, worshipped by pretty much everyone in the realm, you know this dude’s out to steal the Tortallan throne, and you are clearly able to take on a physical form and come into the mortal realm, and yet you use this power to harass a teenager about boning instead of appearing to, oh, I don’t know, SOMEONE IN CHARGE to give them a heads up about the evil sorcerer trying to kill the Crown Prince?  The fuck kind of goddess are you?

Anyway, the Goddess is like, “You’re dealing with your fear of the Duke by remaining vigilant and protecting your prince, and time will cure the other two fears.”  But not the fear of spiders, is what I’m getting from this.  She then takes a burning ember out of the fire and tells Alanna to take it from her hand.  She does, and finds that even though it’s burning, it’s cool to the touch.  And comes with a built-in loop so she can put it on a chain.  I can’t make this shit up.  The Goddess is handing out tokens from Claire’s.  She gives Alanna her hand to kiss, tells the wee kitten to take care of Alanna, and then disappears.

Back at the Palace, Alanna’s friends are besotted with Faithful, which is the name that Alanna gives her new totally-not-supernatural-because-lookit-his-little-punim kitten.  (Gary wants her to name the cat “Raoul.”  You’re weird, Gary.)  He starts following Alanna everywhere she goes—except Duke Roger’s classroom.  When Duke Roger eventually sees him, Faithful freaks out and tries to scratch his eyes out, only barely held back by Alanna.  Because that is very helpful, giving the crossdressing lawbreaker an animal companion that makes more people pay attention to her.

Jesus, Goddess, your gifts SUCK.

Will Faithful continue to be the World’s Worst Familiar?  Will Alanna get over her fear of boning?  How tacky does that ember thing really look?  (Like one of those light-up Christmas necklaces, presumably.) Find out next time in CHAPTER TWO: DUKE ROGER OF CONTE, OR, IN WHICH DIPLOMACY IS VERY DIFFICULT, A DUEL IS HELD, AND SYMBOLIC CHESS IS SYMBOLIC

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

The ride into the Southern Desert, it turns out, is long.  REALLY long.  You just wouldn’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly long it is.   Alanna spends most of it waiting on Lord Martin and Sir Myles and roughly twenty gazillion other people, because she is a page and dammit if pages ain’t gonna do them some work on their Duke-sanctioned field trips.  As they ride towards Persepolis, the city of the Great Southern Desert, they encounter several tribes of the Bazhir, who are MYSTERIOUS and PROUD and make their women wear VEILS and spend their lives riding and fighting in the harsh desert sun and crap.  (I know Tamora Pierce has stated that she based the Bazhir on the Bedouin, but they always read more like she saw Aladdin one too many times and went from there.)  Through these encounters Alanna notices that Lord Martin really seems to hate the Bazhir, and Myles is like “yeah well he has his reasons though!”  The reasons, apparently, are that the Bazhir are “unusual” and that some “renegade” tribes do not accept King Roald as their sovereign, mostly because his father, the Old King, killed a whole lot of them.  But that’s water under the bridge, surely!  Myles adds that no matter how much Lord Martin hates the Bazhir, he’s a very fair man.  Yeah, I guess, fair except for the RACISM.

After a week-long journey, they finally reach Persepolis. Alanna notices that the Bazhir are staring at her and Jonathan very intently.  She feels awkward about this, and continues to feel awkward through their arrival, their room assignation, and the beginning of the night’s formal banquet.  At that point Myles (who is already drunk) introduces Alanna to Ali Mukhtab, the governor of Persepolis Castle and the wearer of one very elegant vest.  He and Alanna have a weird conversation in which he compares her to a cat and she asks about the Bazhir.  Specifically, she asks why he, a Bazhir, is the governor of Persepolis Castle when Lord Martin hates the Bazhir.  (She’s even like “I know he’s fair and all” and he’s like “lol yeah fair my left TESTICLE”).  Apparently one of the few treaties the Old King drew up with the Bazhir before he decided to go the good old “kill ‘em all and let the gods sort ‘em out” route specified that the post of governor must always be held by a Bazhir.  He then leads Alanna and her friends to the Sunset Room, a room built specifically to watch the Black City.

The Sunset Room is missing an entire wall (for better watching purposes, one assumes), and faces west, hence its name.  They can just about see the Black City in the form of a tiiiiiiny speck on the horizon.  You’d think that someone would build a watchtower or something a few miles closer, you know, just to keep an eye on it properly.  Mukhtab tells the squires-and-one-page the story of the Black City: apparently when the Bazhir first came to the Eastern Lands from across the Inland Sea they were greeted by a clan of immortal demon… spirit… monster things called the Nameless Ones, who gave them arable land and cattle and took their souls as payment.  When the Bazhir realized that that was what they were doing they rebelled, burning the Nameless Ones in their own city.  Which… is still standing.  Of course.  Anyway, now the land the Nameless Ones gave them to farm is the Great Southern Desert and Bazhir youths still sometimes feel compelled to go to the City in the middle of the night, whereupon they are tied to their beds and starved to death, because apparently even that is better than facing the Nameless Ones.  Mukhtab then tells them that the Bazhir have another legend: that one day two gods, the Night One and the Burning-Brightly One, will come to the Black City and get rid of the Nameless Ones.  (The Bazhir are bad at names, apparently.)  Jonathan’s like “I wish there was a written history of the Bazhir and also please pay no attention to how intently I am staring at the Black City right now, thank you.”  When the boys go back to their rooms for the night Alanna wonders aloud who exactly the Nameless Ones were and Jonathan says that they are probably made up to scare children.  Alanna’s like, “By the pricking in my thumbs you are a fucking liar, Jonathan of Conte.”

Alanna wakes up in the middle of the night and speed-dresses, in a tremendous hurry for no particular reason.  She meets up with Jonathan, who seems to be in a similar hurry, in the corridor, and they ride out into the desert.  Towards the Black City.  Where people disappear forever.  Because they are CLEVER.

The Black City is, as advertised, quite black.  Once they are inside the gates Alanna suddenly remembers that pesky vision of the black city she’s been having since she was ten (really, Alanna? It took you this long?) and gets all antsy.  She tries to get Jonathan to leave, but he’s all “herp a derp busy looking at carvings.”  Because of their gay relationship she can’t just leave him alone and ride back to Persepolis, so they walk further into the city, towards an enormous temple at the top of a flight of stairs.  As soon as they reach the door Lightning starts humming, and Alanna tries to get Jonathan to leave once again, and he once again opts to stay and get his ass killed look around.  They approach the altar and suddenly ten tall, glowing, inhumanly beautiful men and women show up and start talking about eating them.  Yes, indeedy, it’s the Nameless Ones, who call themselves the Ysandir.  (And have names like Ylira and Ylon and Ylanda.  Presumably Yvette is on vacation.)  They are immortal and eat souls and plan to eat Jon and Alanna’s.

Luckily, they seem to be afraid of Lightning (and the Old Ones in general, as they refer to it as “one of their weapons”), which gives them time to raise walls of power and shoot purple lightning bolts and other Tortallan superhero crap.  Less luckily, the Ysandir are able to read minds, which means they quickly realize that Alanna is an Alanna instead of an Alan.  So they make her clothes disappear.  Jonathan gets a good eyeful of her naked (before lending her his tunic, because he is not yet Asshole Jon—best believe he wouldn’t have helped her cover up past book two) while the Ysandir lol themselves silly about a chick trying to defend a dude.  Which, okay, if we’ve learned anything about Alanna at this point it’s that she cannot stand people LAUGHING AT HER, the Ysandir are clearly doomed.  She holds Jonathan’s hand, and because of their mutual trust or the strength of their friendship or the purity of their gay relationship or something, they are able to raise a Wall of Power which spontaneously melts a couple of the Ysandir.  (They are immortal, but not the kind of immortal that can’t die.  Yeah, it’s never eally explained so don’t even bother trying to figure it out.)  Ylira tries to break their concentration in a way that I think is actually one of the most effective moments in the book:

“How long do you think she will last?” Ylira asked Jonathan, softly.  “Another few moments?  Not even that?  She is a girl.  She is weak.  She will give way, and then where will you be?”
It was the same small voice that taunted Alanna from within whenever she faced a taller, stronger opponent.

YES.  YES.  YES.  All those moments that Alanna’s had throughout this book when she feels inadequate because she’s a girl, all those moments when she thinks she’s a bad person, or a dirty fighter, or not worthy of such-and-such an honour, all those moments when she whines that she’s not good enough, not strong enough, not fast enough, and—when she has proven that she IS all of those things, and more—just not enough of a boy, they all lead up to this fucking moment, when she realizes that the person telling her that she’s worthless, she’s no good, she’s going to fail because she’s a girl and that’s terrible, is wrong.  And that maybe if that person who says she can’t do it is wrong, maybe the voice in her own head that tells her that she’s weak is wrong too.  Connecting your own internalized misogyny with the way you are treated by the world around you—or, rather, connecting that outside voice to the inside one—is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and I am SO glad Tamora Pierce put that in.

Moving on.

 Jonathan and Alanna manage to kill a few more of the Ysandir before they properly retaliate.  A couple of them gather together and start to collect power, which is described as forming in a “small, evil ball.”

It looks pretty much nothing like that, I imagine, but wouldn’t it be cute if it did?  Alanna and Jonathan set a load of them on fire, until only two (Ylon and Ylanda) are left.  They say special nonsense words to collapse the Wall of Power.  (Really, guys?  YOU COULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT BEFORE?)  Alanna and Jonathan aren’t strong enough to fight them, even with their special gay relationship powers, so Jonathan asks Alanna to become what she was the night she saved him from the fever.  Which she does.  They start speaking to the Goddess in their grownup lady and dude voices, and the Goddess answers them, basically telling Alanna to USE THE SWORD YOU GREASY HIPPIE.  Alanna does, swinging Lightning in their faces while Jonathan chants and crap, and together they blow up the last two Ysandir.  And promptly pass out.

Jon and Alanna wake up a few hours later, sore as balls and itching to get out of the Black City. They ride out to an oasis a few miles away, where they can rest and talk.  Specifically, talk about that whole Alanna-has-a-vagina issue.  Alanna explains about the switcharoo she pulled with Thom, and he is duly impressed.  She asks if he is going to tell anyone, and he’s like “dumbass, we just blew up demon-thingies together, you vagina is not that big of a deal.”  She is so grateful she cries, which freaks Jon out a little.  They have a beautiful time together in the oasis, except one awkward moment when Alanna’s like “isn’t it weird that Duke Roger seemed so eager to send you to certain death?” and Jon’s like “TAKE IT BACK,” but everything is fixed a few minutes later when, as they’re falling asleep, Jon asks who she thinks he should choose as a squire come Midwinter.

Alanna sat up on her elbow.  A week ago she would have told him to pick Geoffrey or Douglass.  But she had not been to the Black City then.  She had not proved to the Ysandir that a girl could be one of the worst enemies they would ever face.
But what if she had not gone to the Black City?  Duke Gareth had mentioned that, with a deal more practice, she could become one of the finest swordsmen at Court.  In archery she hit the target every time.  The masters who taught her tactics and logic told her she was sometimes brilliant—Myles said she was far more intelligent than many adults.  She had bested Ralon of Malven, and in some strange way she had won her sword.
All at once she felt different inside her own skin.
“Me,” she said at last.  “You should pick me.”

It’s quite a nice moment—not quite as FUCK YEAH as the one earlier with the Ysandir, but equally important to Alanna, who suddenly realizes that she’s not just not weak, she’s fucking badass.  To her surprise, Jonathan completely agrees, and they have the book’s final gay moment when she kisses his hand and pledges her fealty.  They go to sleep under the stars, and will presumably awake to find they have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to the people they’ve left behind in Persepolis.  The book ends with the words “The Beginning.”  ‘Cause it’s the FIRST adventure, get it?  Oh, Tamora Pierce, you so clever.

Will Alanna and Jon’s gay relationship continue into squiredom?  Will Duke Roger continue his poor-concealed attempts to seize the throne?  Is Alanna going to eventually fake puberty to disguise her lady voice or what?  Find out next time in the first chapter of In the Hand of the Goddess!  Which as of yet does not have a snappy make-believe title, but I bet when it does it’ll be really funny.  No, seriously.

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SIX: WOMANHOOD, OR, IN WHICH ALANNA TELLS GEORGE A SECRET, NEARLY DIES, GETS A LETTER, WINS A DUEL, AND IS INVITED ON YET ANOTHER SPECIAL PAGE FIELD TRIP. IT IS AN ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE THRILL RIDE, BASICALLY.

“Womanhood” is the longest chapter of Alanna: The First Adventure, and it would have been a lot shorter had Alanna ever read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.  Just sayin’.

So Alanna’s doing her sword fighting thing, learning to not be shitty at life, and she wakes up one morning and realizes that there are things happening in her special region.  Mysterious, bloody things.  She freaks out—shockingly—and quickly realizes that she can’t tell any of the Palace healers.  So she decides to ride out into the Lower City to find George, because if there’s one person to whom you can confide your secret double life as a lawbreaking vagina-owner, it’s the King of Thieves.  Rather than actually go inside the Dancing Dove and talk to anyone, she breaks into George’s rooms via the roof.  George hears her coming and nearly slits her throat.  Apparently people who break into his rooms don’t get the one-ear warning.  Alanna tells him that she needs to see a female healer, and George is all “you’ll need to give me a little more than that, brosef.”  And so she tells him.

Alanna swallowed hard.  “I’m not a boy.”  It was incredibly hard to say.  “I’m a girl.”
“You’re a—you’re a what!” George yelled.
“Hush!  D’you want everyone to hear?”  She scuffed her foot against the floor.  “I thought you’d guess.  You have the Gift.”
“And your Gift shields you.  Alan, if this is a jest, it’s a poor time for one.”
She glared at him.  “D’you want me to take my clothes off?”

NO, ALANNA.  And then it comes out that she’s apparently seen George naked like ten thousand times before.  Apparently either Tortall has no nudity taboo or the Dancing Dove is like the Shortbus of imaginary medieval countries.

George takes a moment to absorb this new information, then tells Alanna that he is going to take her to see his mother, a trained healer who used to be a priestess of the Goddess.  She takes Alanna into her study and asks her what’s wrong, and then just about kills herself laughing when Alanna tells her that she’s bleeding from her bikini area.  She tells Alanna that this is not a medical emergency and is just something that happens when you own a vagina for the correct amount of time, and Alanna—guess what!—freaks out.  She’s all I HAVE THE GIFT I CAN MAKE MY VAGINA NOT DO STUFF and Mistress Cooper’s like NO YOU CAN’T DERPYHOOVES, because apparently that pisses the gods off or something.  She gives Alanna an anti-pregnancy charm (even though Alanna insists that she doesn’t intend to have sex at any point, ever—oho, my dear, just wait until your fake homosexual liaison is finally consummated), and then takes her hand to read her future and is all “aw, shit, you’re chosen by the Goddess, SUCKS TO BE YOU.”

And it does suck to be her, because when she gets back to the Palace Duke Gareth grounds her for riding into the Lower City without permission.

She doesn’t get out again until after her thirteenth birthday, when Sir Myles asks her to ride out with him to his estates for a sleepover field trip excursion.  He tempts her by telling her that there is a ruin near his castle that dates back to the Old Ones, the people who founded Tortall.  Duke Gareth gives his permission (in a dressing gown fit for Chrestomanci himself) and within a few days Alanna and Sir Myles are trit-trotting out to Olau, a barony nearly due south of Trebond.  Alanna briefly gets a little homsesick because Olau reminds her of home, except it’s full of orchards and fields instead of bloodthirsty Scanran raiders and the castle has windows that don’t let in the wind.  That seems like a great reason to NOT be homesick, tbh, but okay.

On their second day at the Barony, Myles and Alanna hike out to the ruin and Myles tells her about the super awesome paper he is writing about the way the Old Ones lived.  He is apparently particularly interested in the way they… cooked.  He is like that Sociology graduate student who spends long hours at the grad bar, drinking scotch and talking about his thesis and totally killing your buzz.  Myles also lets slip that he was compelled to bring her out to Olau via prophetic dream.  (Those pop up a lot in Tortall, no big.)  Alanna is weirded out, which is odd, as everyone who meets her can’t seem to stop talking about her special ~destiny.  They reach the ruin, and Alanna’s ~destiny directs her to a big black door in what used to be the armoury.  She promptly moves it using special touched-by-the-Goddess strength.  It opens onto a dark, forbidding tunnel, which Alanna naturally bounds joyfully into, using her Gift to light the way.  She finds a neat-looking sword with a crystal on the pommel and examines it while Myles bellows outside about a sudden storm on the rise, which he says is some kind of supernatural god-storm or some bullshit.  Alanna’s all “yeah, whatevs, lookin’ at this sword I found,” and then the dark tries to strangle her.

Yep.

Suddenly the light of Alanna’s magic went completely out.  Darkness swirled around her in long tentacles that tightened on her body.  She opened her mouth to scream for Myles, and no sound emerged.  She fought to breathe and fought to throw her magic into the stifling blackness, but nothing happened.  She tried to shove it away with her arms and legs and found the blackness had bound her tight.  It was squeezing her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs… She was dying, and she knew it.

Alanna accepts her own death—dude, like two pages ago you couldn’t even accept that you were bleeding from the twat, suddenly you’re accepting your own death?—and then the crystal on the pretty sword she found lights up and, like, sucker punches the darkness off of her.  Or something.  Anyway, she doesn’t die, and Myles is like, “Keep that, I was probably compelled to bring you here because of that life-saving sword with the crystal on the butt.”  Alanna does keep it, and names it Lightning.

Back in Corus, people notice Alanna’s new sword, and she tells them all that she picked it out of Myles’s armoury, instead of telling them that she found it while barreling into a tunnel and getting into a wrestling match with the dark.  (She tells George the truth, and his only reaction is “lol you accepted something?”)  Duke Roger asks to inspect the blade, and when he does he freezes up and twitches and has some kind of crazy evil sorcerer reaction to it.  He’s like “WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THIS IT IS MAGIC AS BALLS” and Alanna plays dumb.  She also realizes that she really, really hates Duke Roger, because apparently the way to get on Alanna of Trebond’s bad side is to mess with her stuff.  SHE JUST DOESN’T LIKE OTHER PEOPLE TOUCHING HER THINGS.

Shortly after this, Stefan the Hostler brings Alanna a secret letter from Thom, who sends them via George.  Thom tells her about having moved from the Convent to the Mithran cloisters, and warns Alanna not to trust Duke Roger.  Yes, Thom, that is certainly something that could conceivably happen.  Thom also mentions that Duke Roger is one of the few living sorcerers powerful enough to send the Sweating Sickness to Tortall, and that he is next in line for the throne should Jonathan die.  George mentions this to Alanna as well, and Alanna pooh-poohs them both.  However, she finds herself working stronger, more complicated spells in her free time, almost as though she actually believes them and isn’t a complete tool.  Almost.

While Alanna works spells and pretends not to hate the Duke, Jonathan keeps going down to the Lower City to drink with the riffraff.  I’m sure that what Pierce was trying to set up here is that Jonathan is a king who cares about the common man, but the Dancing Dove is full of con artists, thieves, swindlers, cutthroats, and ladies* of negotiable affection.  I feel like sending the privileged, sheltered heir to a vast and wealthy kingdom to a den of iniquity as his first exposure to the working class gives him a slightly crooked** idea of what the poor are actually like.  Jonathan is going to be knighted soon and everyone wants to be his squire.  (Note: it is also revealed at this point that Alex was chosen to be Duke Roger’s squire, which makes Alanna side eye at him a lot.)  Everyone wants to be Jonathan’s squire, especially Alanna, but she’s all I’M A GIRL ANGST ANGST I’M NO GOOD AT SHIT ANGST ANGST HE’LL NEVER WANT ME AS HIS SQUIRE ANGST ANSGT FOREVERRRR.  Kid, you have a magical sword and you’re destined as fuck, I think you’re gonna be okay.

In April—this is in Alanna’s fourth year, for those of you keeping score at home—Lord Martin of Meron arrives at Court.  (Fief Meron, by the way, is apparently better known as the Great Southern Desert, a land that was already populated by an indigenous people, the Bazhir, before Tortall conquered it.  And now it’s a “fief” that just happens to be roughly as big as the northern half of the kingdom and home to a number of nations and tribes.  Good show, Tortall.)  He’s come North to propose a trip for all the soon-to-be knights, so they can meet the Bazhir and learn their ways before they inevitably kill them as adults.  Which is all kinds of horrifying.  Lord Martin was an expert swordsman in his youth, and Captain Sklaw takes his arrival as a sign from the gods that it’s Humiliate Alanna Time once again.  He pits her against Lord Martin’s son, Geoffrey, in a free-style practice duel, and she kicks his ass, proving that all those late nights with Coram’s sword have started to pay off.*** It’s a BFD and everybody claps.

Later that night, Jonathan goes to see Duke Gareth to ask him if he can take Alanna on the trip to the Great Southern Desert.  His explanation for why he wants to do this:

“Because he’s my friend.  Because I always know where he stands, and where I stand with him.  Because I think he’d die for me, and—and I think I’d die for him.  Is that enough?”

Before the squires (and one page) leave on yet another Tortallan field trip, Duke Roger calls them all into the Great Library for a special man-to-man talk.  There is, apparently, a place called the Black City in the middle of the desert which is totally evil and from which nobody leaves alive.  He hints that since he is the best and even HE doesn’t dare to go anywhere near it, a bunch of pansy-ass babies like THEM don’t stand a chance.  He is wearing a very pretty sapphire necklace, which he fiddles with as he talks to them, and which makes Alanna sleepy and dopey when she looks directly at it.  He closes his lecture with “I know when a sword is too heavy for me to lift,” almost as though he is challenging them (or rather Jonathan, who he is looking directly at).  This disturbs Alanna deeply, because sure, he’s next in line for the throne, and yeah, he’s been repeatedly named one of the few sorcerers in the Eastern Lands who would actually be able to send the Sweating Sickness from a great distance, and okay, she’s been having weird awkward hostile feelings toward him and his moustache since they both arrived on the scene, but that doesn’t mean anything, right?  Right?  Right?

Will Alanna’s newfound fencing skills come in handy in the desert?  What’s the dealio with this Black City crap?  Will anyone ever stop being derpy about Roger’s repeated attempts to kill Jonathan? (Nope.)  Find out next time in CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

* There may also be men, although they are never mentioned.  In the Beka novels there are certainly a few male sex workers kicking around, although they seem to be an exception to the rule, but perhaps that’s one of those kooky Tortallan customs that died out between King Roger and King Roald, like lady knights or not killing LBGTQ people.

** See what I did there?  Ah, this is why I make the big blogging bucks.

*** This could be a euphemism.  But it’s not.

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER FIVE: THE SECOND YEAR, OR, SUDDENLY: TITS!

After her fun excursion into the Land of the Dead Alanna sleeps for three days, which is a fun way for her to avoid answering any and all awkward questions about her magical lady-voice.  Luckily, nobody actually asks any questions at all, not even Jonathan, which leaves the road clear for Alanna’s next big problem: puberty.

The pages are supposed to go on a trip to neighboring city Port Caynn for the day.  Hopefully the cooks have all packed them special lunches with treats, as is appropriate for field trips.  Alanna is packing in front of the mirror when she suddenly realizes that her chest is moving.  In the “it’s perfectly natural” way, not the “an alien baby is clearly about to burst right out of this mother” way.

Yes indeedy, it seems we have a case of SUDDENLY: TITS.

She freaks the fuck out and starts screaming for Coram to get her bandages!  Oceans and oceans of bandages!  Coram figures out what’s going on (he’s a sharp’un) and he’s like, bro, you can’t fight this shit.  You can be a woman and a warrior, it’s fine.  No she cannot, Coram, because it is ILLEGAL.  Her being a girl was the basis of you wanting to drag her back to Trebond by her hair in the first chapter of this goddamn book.  I usually side with Coram whenever Alanna gets crazy, but he’s not being very consistent here.  He should just tell her to stop shouting about how much she hates her tits before she wakes up the whole goddamn Palace.

So Alanna is now touchier than every about people trying to take her clothes off (which… happens a lot? Jesus, Alanna, do you needs an adult?), and eventually goes nuts when Raoul tries to get her to go swimming.  Raoul’s pretty chill about the whole thing, but Alanna is consumed with guilt and apologizes.  Raoul responds thusly:

“I was teasing you,” he admitted.  “Sure, you got mad.  You’ve a right to do as you want.”
She looked at him in shock.  “I do?”
Raoul frowned.  “I hadn’t meant to say anything, but since I have the chance- Alan, you seem to think we won’t like you unless you do things just like everyone else.  Have you ever thought we might like you because you’re different?”

Which: no, Raoul, most people do not think that their friends like them because they start randomly shouting at them.

The pages all ride back to the Palace, where they run into new arrival Duke Roger of Conte.  He is Jonathan’s cousin and seems to be the mysterious “someone” mentioned in the last chapter who is meant to teach the pages magic.  He is also clever, charming, and handsome as ballsacks*, and everyone pretty much instantly jizzes their pants over him… except Alanna, who, true to form, has a ~strange feeling and is all “idk I dislike him.”  And everyone is like “bro, you trippin’.”  BUT IS SHE?  (Spoilers: nope.)

Duke Roger calls all the pages in, one by one, to see if they have the Gift or not.  Alanna is the last person to be called in, and continues to have ~strange feelings.  The Duke asks her about the Sweating Sickness and stares very intently at her; she tells him about being trained by Maude and her healing Gift and tries very hard to master the urge to scratch his eyes out.  The Duke is playing with his wizard’s rod (NEEDS AN ADULT) the whole time and it gives Alanna a headache, but she manages to get out of it unscathed, albeit deeply, deeply unsettled.  Coram talks to her afterwards and asks if he read her mind.  When Alanna says no, Coram says that she must be protected by the gods.  Predictably, Alanna’s like “lol no.”  Dumbass.

Fun fact: Tamora Pierce originally wrote Song of the Lioness as a single adult fantasy novel.  In that novel, Duke Roger was a Depraved Bisexual who would fuck anything, and who also proved himself to be a child molester when he used the above scene as an excuse to make a move on Alanna.  I am really glad she cut that part out of this book, because 1) ewww, 2) do we really need any more Depraved Bisexuals?  Particularly Child-Molesting Depraved Bisexuals?,** and 3) seriously, ewwwww.

Alright, so after this there’s a bit about George buying Alanna a horse, because she's still riding a pony and ponies are not very knightly mounts.  It is very boring and drags on for far too long, so I won’t be recapping it in any detail.  Here are the important bits: Alanna takes Jon with her down to the Lower City to meet George; Alanna’s new horse is named Moonlight and she’s really beautiful and graceful and blah blah blah (horses are so dull. SO DULL.); Jonathan and George recognize one another and for whatever reason do not mind that one of them is the heir of the realm and the other is the thieviest thief in it; George gives Jon a horse as well, who Jonathan names Darkness.  So yay, everyone is happy and hopefully we never have to hear about bloody horses again.  God help me when I eventually do Wild Magic.

Sometime after this the pages are finally due to start sword practice.  They are taught by a man named Captain Aram Sklaw, who talks like a pirate and has the eye patch to back it up.  He makes fun of all the pages, telling them all that they are fat or lazy or too interested in reading books and thinking and stuff to be any good as swordsmen.  His critique of Alanna: she is short.  Well played, Sklaw.  The pages are made to make their own practice swords and wear them at all times, even in the bath, since if they are caught without them they will be punished.  On the practice courts Sklaw keeps picking on Alanna, who is not only short and a closet chick, but- oh shit- really, really bad at fencing.

And, see, this is one of the elements of the Alanna books, and Tamora Pierce books in general, that appeal to me just as much now as they did when I was younger: Alanna is not born fucking good at everything.  So often in fantasy novels you find characters who are just born good at things, whether it’s swordsmanship or magic or stealing or making friends with adorable plot devices.  There’s never any explanation given for their talents, and they never have to work at them or strive to be better.  Tamora Pierce heroines are usually not automatically fantastic at anything.  They have skills, sure, but they spend time honing them and becoming good at what they do, instead of just rolling out of bed as fencing masters.  They work.  Alanna is not as good an example of this as, say, Kel is later on, but she is still, initially, really fucking bad at swords.

So bad that in her fist real practice duel another page beats her in about ten seconds.  Yikes.

She’s understandably humiliated- knights are not supposed to be bad at swords, dammit!- so she finds Coram the next morning for dawn watch and talks to him about it.  Coram tells her that there are three kinds of swordsmen: those who are born good, those who fail, and those who learn the sword.  Her problem is that she is not a natural.  Unless she wants to fail, and probably die, she will have to learn the sword, which means practicing all the time.  Instead of reacting to this with a temper tantrum, as she would have in the beginning of the novel, Alanna asks to borrow his broadsword.  It’s bigger than she is, but if she wants to learn the sword she wants to do it right.

Alanna of Trebond, you may grow up into a fully functional adult.

Will Alanna learn the sword?  Is she really trippin’ regarding Duke Roger?  Will the onslaught of puberty ever cease?  Find out next time in CHAPTER SIX: WOMANHOOD, OR, IN WHICH ALANNA TELLS GEORGE A SECRET, NEARLY DIES, GETS A LETTER, WINS A DUEL, AND IS INVITED ON YET ANOTHER SPECIAL PAGE FIELD TRIP.  IT IS AN ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE THRILL RIDE, BASICALLY.

* Please do keep in mind that this is a Tamora Pierce book, where “handsome” means “tall and old, with unfortunate facial hair.”  In this case it is a moustache.  Moustaches are always ugly.  No one should ever have one, including you.

** This is not to say we don't need more bisexuals!  Bring on the bisexuals, particularly in fantasy lit, where they tend to be a bit thin on the ground.  Just, you know, make them not evil.  Or child molesters.  Please.

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER FOUR: DEATH IN THE PALACE, OR, IN WHICH EVERYBODY GETS SICK AS BALLS AND UNIMPORTANT PEOPLE DIE

You’d think that a chapter with a dramatic title like “Death in the Palace” would get right to the death at the beginning- you know, start off with a bang.  Instead we are treated to a mini-section about Duke Gareth lecturing Alanna about how fighting is wrong and true nobles never fight with their hands and blah blah blah.  This could easily have been stuck onto the end of the last chapter, but I guess Tamora Pierce wanted Alanna and Jon’s significant ambiguously gay moment to stand alone.  Alanna has to write a formal apology to Ralon’s father (who is presumably off buying his son a box of tissues for his many, many tears) and is restricted to the palace for two months.  No more sneaky eleven-year-old beers for our hero.

And now is there death?  Haha, no.  First we need to know about all of Alanna’s friends becoming squires!  After Midwinter (which is like Chistmas, but with no Jesus), Gary, Alex, and Raoul are no longer pages and Alanna helps them move into their new quarters.  She spends a few sentences missing them, but then she finds out that Jonathan is just as good at math as Alex (who used to help her in math class- yes, the pages in this medieval kingdom have math class, presumably they also have recess and sock hops), and they start hanging out a lot more, thusly:

“Many evenings after that they could be found in each other’s rooms, their heads bent over a map or a piece of paper.”

Yep.

March comes around and finally, FINALLY, there is some goddamn death in the goddamn Palace in the form of the Sweating Fever.  All of a sudden everyone is sick, from the people of the Lower City to the Queen.* The pages are the last ones to get sick, Raoul being the first of Alanna’s close friends.  Alanna remembers the conversation she had with Maude about her Gift of healing; she starts to feel guilty about not using it to help people, and decides to… continue not using it to help people.  Like you do.

Gary, Alex, and Francis (remember him? I didn’t!) are the next ones to get sick.  Francis, conveniently enough, is the sickest, falling into delirium on the very first day.  Because he hasn’t had any lines yet he’s pretty much a goner and, sure enough, he’s the first one to die.  Alanna’s all FUCK I COULD HAVE SAVED THE SHIT OUT OF HIM and angsts a bit.  (But only a bit.  You’ve got to save your feelings for people with dialogue.)

The next morning, Alanna gets the news that Jonathan is sick and calling for her.  She runs to his room and finds it full of smoke and incense and priests of the Black God chanting and, like, flagellation and moaning and ten kinds of freaky shit.  She freaks out and goes to get Myles, which is a little weird considering Myles is a minor knight with little influence.  Can’t she get Duke Gareth to go wave them out, or find George and make him cut off all their ears?  She tells Myles that she has the Gift and wants to help Jonathan.  Apparently all the healers in the Palace who try to cure people of the fever find themselves quickly drained of magic.  Myles charges into the room, orders out all the writhing death priests, and talks to Duke Baird, the royal healer.  Baird tells Alanna that the fever seems to be magical in nature, sent by an enemy sorcerer to drain healers and kill people, and mentions that he finds it interesting that the fever only struck the heir to the throne after all the Palace healers were out of commission.  He instructs Alanna to use her Gift to give him energy, just to test her strength; she nearly zaps him, convincing him that she is, in fact, strong enough to start putting the hurdy-gurdy on Prince Jonathan.  She uses the opportunity to have another gay moment with him, holding his hand and stroking his temples and basically doing everything but crooning Spanish love songs into his ear while licking his neck.  Seriously, Tortall must be the most open-minded place in the Eastern Lands.

She nurses Jonathan, with Coram and Myles taking shifts to help her, and he eventually coughs up the stuff in his lungs; his fever continues to rise, though, and for whatever reason Alanna continues to not use her goddamn magic.  King Roald and Queen Lianne (who is still weak from her own bout of fever) eventually come and visit to be like, “yo, why is this eleven-year-old taking care of our only son and heir?”  Alanna tells them that she did not mention her Gift when she first arrived because her mother and father both had it too, and when she died when the twins were born her father decided not to let either of them have anything to do with magic.  (So apparently Maude taught them on the sly?  Good to know.) (Also, it has been mentioned several times throughout the Tortall books that untrained mages end up kill people and blowing shit up accidentally, what the fuck, Lord Trebond needs a World's Best Dad award for sure.)  She says that even though she doesn’t want to be a knight who uses magic- it feels like cheating- she can’t keep letting her friends die.  A noble thought, that.  After all, next time it might be someone who talks.  King Roald mentions that Jonathan also has the Gift, and that if when he gets well he is going to hire ~someone to teach the pages about magic.  BUT WHO.

After they leave, Jonathan’s fever gets worse, and Alanna finally bites the bullet and casts a spell.  She calls on the Great Mother Goddess, and briefly sees that city from the first chapter again before starting to glow purple and speak in an adult (female) voice and other creepy shit.  Myles is in the room and notice all this, especially the adult female voice thing.  The Goddess speaks to Alanna- apparently her voice hurts Alanna’s ears, which is probably meant to convey divinity and power but makes me think that she’s just got one of those loud, flat, foghorn voices that make people sound like they’re yelling all the time- and tells he to call Jonathan back from Death.  And so Alanna sinks into Jonathan’s consciousness and into a place between life and death, and the Dark God’s all, SUP.  (He is dressed in a robe with a hood; it does not say if he is an anthropomorphic skeleton with a weakness for cats, but I have to assume he is.)  Alanna’s like, I’d like my friend back now and also if you could not kill me that’d be super.  The Black God’s like LOL K, because he’s cool like that.  Jon takes Alanna’s hand and Alanna notices that when he talks to her it’s in a grown man’s voice.  Why this happens is never really explained, so let’s just assume ~destiny and leave it at that.  

Anyway, they zoom back up into the world of mortals, where Jonathan now seems to be healthy and Myles is thinking very hard about the fact that he just heard Alanna talking in a lady-voice and Jonathan talking in a man-voice.

But he won’t get the chance to ask about it, because Alanna passes out as soon as she reenters her body.

Will Myles figure out the whole lady-voice/man-voice thing?  What mysterious sorcerer sent the Sweating Fever to Corus?  How many more gay moments can Alanna and Jonathan have?  (Lots.  The answer is lots.)  Find out next time in CHAPTER FIVE: THE SECOND YEAR, OR, SUDDENLY: TITS!

* Myles, notably, is not sick; this is actually only notable because he tells Alanna that he is too full of wine for there to be room for sickness, which I find interesting in the same way that I find Coram’s alcoholism interesting.  In her early books Pierce seems to be pretty blasé on the subject of alcohol dependency: everybody drinks and people who drink too much are just jolly drunks, whereas in the later books most of her main characters are said to drink water or fruit juice rather than alcohol and a few characters are described as having overcome alcoholism.  Hell, eleven-year-old Alanna’s pounding back beers in the Dancing Dove; eleven-year-old Kel is drinking sensible hot toddies in her room.  It seems that Pierce had a change of heart regarding alcohol consumption between writing Song of the Lioness and most of her other books.  I wonder if we’ll ever get an update regarding Coram’s drinking habits and whether or not he’s quit, as Myles seems to have done in the later books.  Just a thought that got too big for a parenthetical aside.