More than a Story

As with many avid readers, I have a to-read list that is so long it would be physically impossible to get through in my lifetime. Because of this, I rarely re-read a book, even if it was the best thing I’d ever read. Despite this, Tamora Pierce’s Tortall series is an exception that I will continue to re-read, over and over again.

The series now covers multiple generations in the world and I care about the characters more than most of my casual acquaintances.

From the first book, Alanna, the First Adventure, Pierce hooks readers with a strong, honourable, ambitious girl who wants nothing more than to be a knight in a world where females are not allowed to be knights. The first series in the Tortall world (The Song of the Lioness) follows Alanna’s inability to back down from a fight which gets her into countless scrapes and extraordinary situations. We also see her grow from a pre-teen into a fully-fledged knight-errant, roaming the world in search of glory, then returning to save her homeland from a great threat.

The Story

Alanna and her twin brother swap places on their way to their individual boarding education, with her brother off to learn magic and Alanna off to become a knight by pretending to be her brother. She is able to keep her identity secret until the end of the second book, when she is fully-knighted when a man who has been trying to usurp the throne of her kingdom outs her, and she leaves the kingdom in disgrace, despite having saved the royal family from death by voodoo doll.

The final two books describe her travels as Tortall’s first lady knight in several hundred years, taking lovers, and doing her best to bring glory to her country. While Alanna is off forging bonds with foreign lands, her brother, now the most powerful sorcerer in the world, is taunted into “proving his power” by bringing back the usurper from the dead. Disgusted that her old nemesis is back, Alanna leaves again, this time set on stealing a magical stone from the top of a mountain from a protective spirit that will bring prosperity to her country.

On her way home, she encounters a disowned princess with whom to set up her best friend, the prince of the kingdom. When she gets home, she helps to foil the plot of the usurper, but not before he’s killed the king, queen, and Alanna’s brother.

First Love

Besides being one of the first longer books I read as a youth, and therefore highly nostalgic for me, this series sticks with me to this day for many of the storytelling principles learned in our class.

• It’s universal,
• Has a clear structure,
• Is simple, and
• Gives us characters to root for.

Universality

The struggle of honour vs malignance, the struggle of women in a male-dominated world, the struggle of a teen to grow up and find her place… Tamora Pierce has written an infinitely relatable tale, even beyond its marketed audience of junior high girls.

Comparing it to Christopher Booker’s 7 Basic Plots, it works in several of them, including “overcoming the monster” (the usurper threatening her homeland), “the quest” (both to become a knight and then to collect the mythical stone that will save her kingdom) and “the voyage and return.”

Clear Structure

Since the books follow Alanna chronologically as she grows, they are separated into clear periods of her life, from girlhood, teenagerhood, new adulthood, to a fully-grown woman.

Simple

These books are not overflowing with descriptions of feasts or fashion (cough cough George R.R. Martin cough cough) that readers (or maybe just me…) will skim over, nor are there any extraneous characters. The series is not convoluted, but not so simplified as to be boring or confusing.

Characters

And of course, the books give us characters we can root for. Alanna is my perfect woman: determined, hard-working, and honourable, while also being stubborn, over-focused, and grumpy. She charms everyone around her, including us readers with her flaws and impresses us all with her strengths. And the author doesn’t shy from throwing the world of troubles at her. She overcomes them all with her own grit and integrity, the friends she made along the way, and a bit of early intervention from a goddess who sees her potential (is that cheating? maybe, but I forgive her!).

Stuck with Me

The stories have stuck with me to this day because of the characters told and the world built. Pierce wrote characters that were realistically strong and flawed, threw so many stakes at them that we had to root for them, and put them in a story that didn’t get in the way of itself with overwriting. Pierce’s example of storytelling is one I hold dear to me as a writer and communicator.

The world Tamora Pierce built will always be a place I want to live in, and her characters will always be my friends.