Prompt – A book from a series with more than 20 books.
Medium – Book
About the Book – The 19th book in the Tortall series, and the first in a short series (Daughter of the Lioness), the book tells the story of Alianne, the daughter of the King’s Champion, Alanna, and the King’s spymaster, George Cooper. Aly is desperate to become a spy like her father, but her parents refuse, thinking the work too dangerous and risky for a young woman. After an argument, Aly runs away from her home but is captured and sold as a slave in the Copper Isles. She soon finds out that her life has been taken over by the God of Tricksters, Kyprioth, who has plans not only for Aly, but also for the family that she serves. The family and Aly are exiled to the lonely highlands, where it becomes clear that there is a movement to bring to fruition a prophecy to make one of the family’s daughters the next Queen of the Copper Isles.
My Rating – 9.5/10. This has to be one of my favourite fantasy books that I have read this year so far. It has an engaging and magical story line – with strong heroes, magical creatures, mages and human-crow men. I enjoyed the main character – there has been some criticism that she is a little Mary-Sue-ish (a little bit too perfect), but I found her likeable and especially enjoyed the way that she came into the story as a fully-developed person, rather than growing into her character. The main male character Nawat, is completely adorable – with his misunderstandings about how human interactions work and his ‘heart on his sleeve’ attitude to his feelings for Aly. I really enjoyed their playful relationship and want to see how it develops. I’ve also heard that in the later stories, Aly is more out of her depth, which will hopefully allow for her character to show more flaws.
The other characters in the story are likeable too – especially the Duke, the Duchess and their daughters Dove and Sarai. Each of them are underestimated and thought badly of at some point in the story, but you see them in their true colours at the end. There was one part of the story I didn’t like – hence the 0.5 off a perfect score – and I will be interested to see how this part of the story develops. The story line involves the struggles between the luarin (white nobles) and the raka and part-raka (their black servants and slaves). The raka are all brilliant characters and within the family, the luarin and raka work together to overcome adversity. The prophecy mentioned earlier involves the part-raka ladies (Sarai and Dove) becoming Queens of the kingdom, unifying the islands and freeing raka. The bit I found slightly problematic is that the raka had been working on this for a couple of years, but it was only when Aly (who is white) came along that things actually started to happen and go their way. It felt a little white-saviour syndrome-y, but I would like to read the rest of the books to see how the story progresses, as apparently this problem is resolved in later books.
Would I read it again? Definitely. I also would love to read the rest of this short series at some point – but will need to wait until my TBR pile is smaller!
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