First Test by Tamora Pierce

A Reread Review, Possible Spoilers

I've read First Test a few times and, during this reread, it really struck me how much more detail there is in Keladry's story than there was in Alanna or Daine's. I can much more easily visualize life as a page during Kel's time. We also get a good chunk of Kel's inner dialogue, which makes her character feel much more like a person.

We know from the start that Lord Wyldon doesn't think women have any business being knights or even fighters. However, it really, really struck me this time around just how ridiculous his views on that are. The standout among his views was this:

"My experience with females is that they begin early."

Pertaining to flirting and relationships. Kel is 10 in this book. 10. And Wyldon believes she's going to start being all flirty and distracting the boys in a sexual manner. I really wanted to punch him upon reading that this time. While he does allow Kel to stay at the end (that's not a spoiler, this is a tetralogy after all), his views haven't exactly changed and he believes that her feelings growing up might be an issue. I heartily rolled my eyes. Wyldon does, however, treat Kel fairly, in my opinion. Do I wish he'd insisted that, starting that year, everyone would be given a probationary year before becoming a page? Yes. Yes, I do. But since that doesn't happen and given what does and how he reacts to it, I'd say he actually does treat Kel fairly despite his obviously messed up views on girls.

There is a scene between Duke Baird and Kel after one of her fights with Joren and his crew that reminded me very much of a semi-similar scene in Stephanie Meyer's New Moon. This scene was far superior to the New Moon scene. Neal's ranting both to Kel and himself made me chuckle.

Speaking of Neal... He's my favorite side character. He's just the right kind of snarky BFF Kel needs to balance out her very Yamani-esque affectations. On a side note, I do really like that Kel had some experience with fighting training in her past, even if it wasn't precisely what she needed for Tortallan knighthood. That Kel's experiences in the Yamani court before the age of ten were helpful at all was honestly kind of surprising, but... yeah, apparently they start them young on the Yamani Islands.

I had fun rereading First Test, though I don't really have any more thoughts on it. Definitely an excellent start to the Protector of the Small tetralogy.

A Side Note

While rereading this, I kept thinking back to how, when I first read Protector of the Small, I thought it was really neat that Tamora Pierce had a Japanese analog culture in her writing. I remember voicing this thought to my best friend and she was very dismissive and semi-angry about it, as though having another culture represented in a fantasy novel was a bad thing or something. I don't quite remember. We were 12.