The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce

Other characters, like Jon, feel entirely out of character for the whole novel. I’d guess Alanna at fourteen by the writing. She’s travelling on her own and well-respected enough to take on adult roles but she certainly isn’t written like she has an adult mind, not even an older teenage mind. Alanna, despite being eighteen, still acts like a child for most of the book.

The characters are the other glaring issue in The Woman Who Rides Like A Man. This whole Bazhir plot aged very poorly and though Pierce admits in her author’s note that she knows better now the actual story is still problematic. The fact that there’s also a plot where they essentially decide to bow down to a king who is from an entirely different people/culture is a very white saviour trope. There’s also the idea that women wearing face coverings (even though the women in the story WANT to wear them) is automatically oppression. They’re not written out and out as savages…but there is a lot of Alanna “civilising” them by teaching them that women are people too. She spends much of the book with the Bazhir, a people who live in the desert. I feel like this series has taken a sudden turn downhill when it had a pretty solid start.Īlanna is eighteen and this book follows her first year as a knight of Tortall. Unfortunately this book ended up being my least favourite in the series so far and left me doubtful of Lioness Rampant and how it will close off the series. I hoped for a more serious story with more grown up characters and a deeper look at the world and Alanna’s place in it. Alanna was getting older and so the story would age with her. I thought that Song of the Lioness was going to be the sort of series that improved with each volume. 'Men don't think and differently from women - they just make more noise about being able to.' As the first female shaman, Alanna must fight to change the ancient traditions of the stubborn desert tribes, for their own sake and for the sake of all Tortall. But her real challenge doesn't come until after she wins. Captured by desert tribesmen, she is forced to prove herself in a magical duel to the death. This third book in the Song of the Lioness quartet continues Alanna's saga as she strikes out alone and discovers herself anew.Ī knight at last, Alanna of Trebond heads out to seek adventure in the desert of Tortall. Published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers on March 1, 1986Īlso in this series: Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, Lioness RampantĪlso by this author: Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, Lioness Rampant The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce