16th May, 2008
In The Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
This is Book 2 in the Song of the Lioness series. Check out my review of Book 1, Alanna: The First Adventure.
Alanna is still pretending to be a boy at the King’s court and is now Prince Jonathan’s squire. So far, only a few people know about her secret. One night, Alanna meets a stranger in the middle of the night while she’s travelling back to the palace. The stranger happens to be a Goddess and she kind of advises Alanna to face her fears.
Then, Alanna is also cautious of Jonathan’s cousin, Duke Roger of Conte. She suspects of the duke’s intentions to wipe out the whole of the royal family and other important knights so that HE can be the King of Tortall. When there was war between Tortall and Tusaine, Alanna was captured by the Tusaines. The Duke knows that Alanna is against him and plans to get rid of ‘him’. He thinks Alanna is a boy.
Besides being worried about the Duke of Conte, Alanna also has to deal with George Cooper and Jonathan who are trying to win her heart. This makes Alanna pretty confused and she always says that love is not important to her at all. All she wants to do is be a knight and have many great adventures. Anyway, she’s also trying to act like a girl at times, for example wearing girls’ dresses and receiving lessons from George’s mother on how to act like a proper lady.
After Alanna’s eighteenth birthday, she has to go through the Ordeal of Knighthood. A few years ago, Jonathan and her other friends went through it and after the ordeal, they came out looking like they went through the worst in their lives. Therefore, she’s quite worried about passing the Ordeal and finally getting her shield.
There was one part where Alanna was not very bright. In the war with Tusaine, Duke Gareth, the queen’s brother, was ‘accidentally’ injured. Duke Gareth was supposed to lead the army against the Tusaine fighters. But then, Duke Roger was chosen instead to take over Duke Gareth’s place as leader of the army. It’s quite clear that Duke Roger had something to do with Duke Gareth’s accident and since Alanna was always suspecting that Duke Roger was up to no good, it’s quite surprising that she doesn’t know why he’s the army’s leader now. George had to explain it all to her.
Anyway, two more Song of the Lioness books to go!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
- Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
- Doing It by Melvin Burgess
- Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
- 1984 by George Orwell
Posted in Adventure, Authors P, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Titles I, Young Adult Fiction at 2:12 pm |
2 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post
Add a Comment
Back to Top
|
On May 25, 2008 at 12:42 am Em said:
I really loved this series. The books about Daine (sp?) are my favorite though. Have you read those yet?
On June 2, 2008 at 5:45 am Josette said:
Hi Em!
Daine? Um, who’s that already? Perhaps you could refresh my memory!