Song of the Lioness Series Overview

Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

Contains spoilers for: Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant, possibly other Tortall books previous and later in the chronology

Boy, does Song of the Lioness not want to stick around in my brain. I mentioned in my Lioness Rampant review that I had read that book at least three times and I am basically rediscovering it each time. I find that's largely true of the rest of the series as well. It's not that I didn't really enjoy the series or that is a bad series. I'm really not sure what it is. Maybe the Alanna in my brain is just as restless as the one in the books and she just drags her story out with her when she leaves my head. We may never know.

I did have Alanna in my head, as well as Kel from Protector of the Small, when I was reading the Beka Cooper series. Apparently in the years between Beka and Alanna, female knights just fell so completely out of fashion that they weren't even though of as a thing anymore. I guess this is a little justified given Beka encounters that religious sect of "The Gentle Mother" that I hated. Guess their doctrine spread and we just didn't get anymore female knights after that. That Alanna didn't even think she could try for her shield as herself rather than "Alan" says so much... though it is definitely unclear as to whether or not girls trying for their shields was outlawed or just... ya know, died out eventually due to societal pressure. I'm pretty sure it was just societal pressure because Kel encounters some of the same issues but no one, in the government at least, tries to stop her from earning her shield.

A lot of things about Alanna's world are very male-centric, even outside of Tortall. Thayet couldn't inherit her father's kingdom because she was a girl. Kara and Kourrem were outcast because of their magic before Alanna came along - this may have just been Akhnan ibn Nazzir being the backward jerk that he was, but... the other shamans appear to be male so... not real sure on that one. It's not super clear what's done with girls with The Gift in Bazhir culture. Apparently women can inherit land in Tortall, but not necessarily the titles that come along with it, unless you're Alanna apparently. I get that all of this has to do with both our own history and the landscape Tamora Pierce was writing in, it's just a little interesting to look at. Or at least take note of, I guess. I kind of feel like this is an instance of trying to make this world seem pretty similar to our own instead of going "Oh hey, let's just make gender equality a thing in these societies because we can." Many shrugs.

I've kind of been mentioning and also skirting around Pierce's writing style in these books. I was so annoyed with Beka's blow-by-blow of her journeys that Song of the Lioness was a breath of fresh air but also kind of odd, to me. Pierce does a lot of telling and not showing, but also doesn't describe things in a lot of detail. A lot of Song of the Lioness does rely on the reader to imagine the settings and clothing and all that. Great swathes of time are just skipped over here, where they later won't be in other books. The characterization is also pretty sparse. We get a character description and then some instances of dialogue and actions from characters, but not enough that I'd be able to tell you "Oh, so-and-so definitely wouldn't do that" at any given moment because it's just not real clear. This does make sense as it's Pierce's first novel series and was originally a single novel before she chopped it up... a thing I did not know until reading the 2014 afterwords included in my copies. It's definitely not a bad thing as Pierce's writing is engaging in other ways, but it was definitely something I noticed. Might be part of why I have such a hard time keeping Song of the Lioness in my head.

I honestly feel like Alanna herself is pretty steady as a character throughout the series. She does grow up, but the changes are more subtle than in-your-face. Jonathan is actually the one who has the most in-your-face growth and that's mostly because he was an ass in The Woman Who Rides Like a Man... but I ranted a bit about that in that review so I won't do it here. Alanna is very goal-driven, but blossoms into a whole person when she's allowed to just wallow in parts of herself she'd neglected through her quest of her shield.

Although Alanna was written in the 1970s, I feel like she's a pretty modern character. Like modern to now, even if she did and does have to deal with that medieval male-centric nonsense. Alanna herself feels very modern. She doesn't take crap from people and has the freedom to do as she likes. I know part of that is that she's a knight and a noble on top of that, but... yeah. She just doesn't feel stuck in the societal expectations of what a woman of that relative time period "should" be.

Not that the Tortall universe should be taken as historical record of anything given that it is fantasy and does not take place in our world, but Tortall did ruin my perception of how the Knight system actually worked. I was forever ruined by Tortall's system for training Knights. It definitely did not work like that in real life, but it's a semi-neat fantasy system. Reminds me of boarding schools... which I also have very little actual experience with. Actual knights were granted knighthoods basically as a reward for service and were considered lower nobility. So, like, Jon would not have been a knight because he was the prince. Actual formal training like we see in Tortall wasn't exactly a thing, and, of course, there wasn't a magical Ordeal that made sure you could handle becoming a knight. The Wikipedia article is fascinating and goes into much more depth than I'm even going to try for here.

I really do enjoy Song of the Lioness while I'm reading it, even if I can't really remember a lot of details after the fact. The first two books are fairly quick in their progression, getting Alanna from Page to Knight. The second two are a bit more fleshed out, actually taking some time to explore Alanna's life in a slightly more day-to-day fashion without actually ending up doing exactly that. Song of the Lioness is definitely a much better introduction to Tortall than the Beka Cooper series, in my opinion. I did originally enter Tortall through Alanna and Tortall remains one of my favorite fantasy lands to visit.