Trickster's Choice

Yes, Aly's over-talented and kind of annoying. Yes, the book has a serious case of "A white person tried their best while writing this." But just when I thought all of the messiness had killed my nostalgia, it snuck up behind me about 2/3 of the way in and hit me with a brick.
Trickster's Choice shows us a rich new part of the Tortallan Universe that both introduces a unique new setting full of interesting characters and creatures and offers new insight into what we learned about the world in earlier series. Pierce, who has earned a lot of credit for dealing explicitly with women's issues like sexism, rape, and birth control, is certainly less informed on the subject of race, but I appreciate that she writes about racism and colonialism show more with the same level of honesty and passion that she does with subjects more in her comfort zone. Over the course of the book, Aly gets to know and care about a wide variety of interesting characters in the oppressed ethnic group (the dark-skinned raka) and understand the politics of the ruling class (the white luarin), and the racial dynamics are shown to be as messy and fraught as they are in real life. It's not a simple situation of two ethnic groups at war with one another, because these two groups have been interacting with one another for centuries. So there are mixed characters; there are raka nobles and luarin slaves; there are foreigners and gods and crows, all with their own motivations and perspectives. Attention is drawn to the intersections between race, gender, and class. The main character says a lot of things about racial dynamics that I don't really agree with (for instance, that the luarin enriched the isles through their rule), but the fact that there's so much room to argue about various interpretations of the setting's politics and history, and that there are so many parallels to real world discussion of racism and colonialism, is a testament to how fully realized the setting is.
But is it a good book? I didn't enjoy the first half very much at all, primarily because Aly is so much of a white saviour. However, that made me enjoy the second half a whole lot more, because the book is such an interesting deconstruction of the white saviour trope. I also enjoyed the second half a lot more because I got invested in the setting's characters and politics... much like Aly, actually! I'm looking forward to rereading the second book.
While Trickster's Choice is perfectly passable if you treat it as a fun YA adventure and no more than that, I believe that the most interesting way to read it is as a response to and investigation of the white saviour trope, particular as it appears in novels like Trickster's Choice--those occupied with the adventures of young, noble, European-coded heroines in foreign lands. Comparable texts include Pierce's own Song of the Lioness (particularly the third book) and Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword. You might not want to read this book to learn about colonialism--it's probably better to seek out texts by victims and scholars of colonialism and racism for that. But once you have some knowledge of the subject, it's absolutely a worthwhile read. show less

Aly is the teenage daughter of Alanna the Lioness and George Cooper. Unlike seemingly everyone around her, she feels no calling. Her parents, her brothers, her friends--all of them know exactly what they want to do and fiercely pursue it. The only thing Aly feels remotely interested in is being a spy like her father, but he refuses to let her spy for him, on the reasonable grounds that it's too dangerous of a career. Annoyed after a fight with her mom, Aly strikes out in a small boat for a family friend's estate. But disaster strikes, and Aly is instead caught by slavers. Luckily, they don't recognize who her family is, but unluckily, this means Aly is sold as a common, untrained slave. She's bought by a fairly kind family and show more immediately begins crafting an escape plan. But before she even leaves the compound, the Trickster God of the islands visits her and offers to transport her back to Tortall in exchange for a year's service protecting the young ladies of the household. Aly is pretty sure she could get back to Tortall without the god's help, but is intrigued by the challenge and wants to keep the girls safe, so she agrees. For the next year, Aly dedicates herself to protecting her master's family from danger, whether from their unstable king or the gods themselves. To make her job easier, the god visits the owners and tells them Aly is his chosen representative on earth. He also sends her a flock of crows to serve as her messengers, warriors, and spies.

I didn't really buy Aly as a teenage girl. I don't think any amount of training, even by the king of thieves, would make a sixteen year old, truly on her own for the first time in her life, in an entirely foreign land, feel as confident and untroubled as Aly seems when she's taken as a slave, beaten, mistreated, and literally sold to strangers. Aly is sanguine about everything thrown at her, whether it being a god's visitation or the prospect of sleeping with a lord to get information. She masters everything, or is already good at everything, that she tries her hand at. I wish the god hadn't smoothed her path so much--this book would have been far more interested if she'd had to protect the family while being looked at as a real slave, instead of just playacting as one. And I wish she'd been a bit more challenged to understand the local situation, religion, way of life, language, etc. But overall this was an enjoyable read.


My original review, back in January 2006: Aly is Alanna's feisty young daughter. She is incredibly annoying, so much so that I never finished the first chapter. Perhaps the writing style drastically changes after that, but I doubt it. Pierce seems too enamored of the Mary-Sue style to bother with anything else. show less

Often tiresomely repetitive in its phrasing - Pierce often likes to tell rather than show - yet still a fun read that draws one in.

I don't know about Pierce's rendering of conquest, subjugation, slavery, and racism. It seemed to lack subtlety. I kept finding myself thinking about how differently someone like Nalo Hopkinson might have treated the same subject. As much as the book's heroine is sympathetic to the struggles of the colonized raka, there's so much distance between her experience (and therefore, the reader's) and that of the indigenous people. Aly is obviously so privileged. Though I suppose it is a blessing that Pierce doesn't try to claim she knows how brown and black people might experience racism and colonization, and show more writes from the perspective of a white girl who's an outsider to these struggles instead.

My favorite parts were those that detailed Sarai and Aly's enjoyment of flirting and kissing as fun activities in their own sake. It was nice not to see guilt and shame attached to such things, at least not in the minds of those two particular people. And I like the idea that one (especially a girl) could engage in all kinds of different behaviors with other people as a kind of experiment or a form of practice, to see what it would be like. show less

With Alianne, or Aly, of Pirate's Swoop, Pierce adds another strong, capable heroine to her already quite full canon. Daughter of Alanna and George Cooper, Aly's story is about finding one's way in the shadow of parents who are known for greatness. One might expect the daughter of the Lioness to follow those footsteps into knighthood, but Aly's talents lie elsewhere.
I find the strength of this series to be in the over-arching plot, which is extremely high stakes and laced with intrigue. Whereas Alanna's books were all tied together by her preventing a usurpation of the throne by an ambitious Duke, Aly's are about the effects of colonialism and the attempt of an oppressed people to retake their ancestral homeland. This plot does not show more meander; it matters. This has been a consistent strength of Pierce's Tortallan books. Within this strong narrative frame, Pierce takes ample opportunity to develop her heroine into a snarky, capable, and likable character. show less

I hadn't realized how long it had been since I read this series - since I hadn't reviewed it here, at least since 2007. Much too long. I do love Aly - her frustration over not being allowed to do what she's able and interested in doing, the matter-of-fact way she uses her skills when she ends up needing them - she gets caught in a pirate raid and is taken as a slave, and coolly damages herself in fights so that she won't be chosen as a bed-warmer. For instance. She's exceedingly lucky in who ends up getting her...and then she finds out it's a god meddling (as so often happens in Tortall). She never really feels out of her depth - the job she has to do, and the tools and allies she has to do it with, are exactly what she needs and what show more she's been training for all her life (hmm - more meddling?). I find it very amusing (I can't now remember if it's in this book or the next) when she realizes what Kyprioth's wager with her actually was... This is half a story - well, it's a good story and has more or less an ending, but the second book is really necessary to complete the arc. One story in two books (and according to the author's afterword, the only reason it's not another four-book series is Harry Potter and the realization by publishers that people really will read big fat books). show less

I love Pierce's books, high fantasy young adult works featuring strong heroines. Aly is the daughter of the heroine who started it all, Alanna, from The Lioness Quartet. I liked her a lot more than her progenitor though, and prefer the two Trickster books to that early quartet or the Immortals with Daine. I was surprised to find out that among her characters Aly is the one Pierce likes the least. I think she's my favorite, even though Keladry gives her a run for her money. But then I think the very qualities that put Pierce off are exactly what I find attractive. I love Aly's cunning. She's well-named as a trickster who triumphs using her brain and not a sword. Reading the reviews, some seem to think her too clever by half, but I show more enjoyed Aly nimble mind and wit and ability to get out of scrapes and triumph. And she gets into a big one at the start of the book, where she gets kidnapped into slavery and winds up in a land reminiscent of Indonesia. Another great ride, and I like the sequel, Trickster's Queen even more. show less

All Alianne (Aly) wants to do is be a spy like her father, however her parents don’t agree. So, frustrated at them she sails down the coast only to be captured by pirates. She's sold as a slave to the Balitang family as a general worker, and makes a deal with the Trickster God, Kyprioth, if she keeps the Balitang children alive until autumn, he will convince her father to allow her be a spy, however this deal may be harder than it seems. I'd have to say that I have read most of Tamora Pierce’s books and have loved them all and Trickster's choice is defiantly a hit. Aly is an interesting strong female lead who is both feisty yet likeable. This is a really fascinating story with action, humor and romance. I would recommend show more Trickster’s Choice to anyone who likes good YA fantasy.
Certainly Tamora Pierce is one of my favorite writers in this genre.
Jack Murphy show less