Daughter of the Lioness
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The Daughter of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce is a duology set in the Tortall universe, approximately 24 years after the end of The Song of the Lioness quartet. It is centred on Alianne of Pirate's Swoop, the very spoiled and sassy sixteen-year old daughter of Tortall's legendary lady knight, Alanna the Lioness. Her mother isn't the only legend in Aly's life--from her adopted aunt Daine, a demi-goddess and mage, to her godfather, the king of Tortall, Aly lives among legends and wonders. She takes them in stride. What she cannot accept is the fact that her parents refuse to allow her the career she's been raised to by her father, that of a spy . Her mother says, "not another spy in the family;" her father says, "not my little girl!". Aly's had enough. If her parents won't let her be a spy, then at least she means to have some fun and she gets more than she expected when she sails into a pirate fleet. The pirates capture her and sell her as a slave to the noble Balitang family in the Copper Isles.
[edit] Trickster's Choice
It is with the Balitangs that Aly's great adventure begins, courtesy of the trickster god of the Isles, a jaunty fellow named Kyprioth. Once ruler of the Isles, he lost his throne to Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess when the governing luarin, or whites, conquered the raka people of the Isles three hundred years before. Now he has a plan to re-take the Isles with the help of the raka and their luarin friends. For his plan to work, he needs the last two daughters of the old line of raka queens to stay alive when they are exiled, along with their father, step-mother, step-sister, and step-brother to a small and distant estate on the northernmost Isle. Kyprioth makes Aly a wager. If she can keep her master's children alive during their summer in exile, safeguarding them from the dangers that exist for a family out of royal favor, Kyprioth will not only return her to her home, but persuade her father to let her be a spy. If Aly fails, she owes the god a year's service, if she is alive to pay the debt. Aly takes the wager.
It will be in the highlands on Lombyn Isle that Aly learns of the raka's long struggle for freedom and of the mad decisions made by the present ruling family. There she will learn to respect the Balitang children and their parents and to admire the conspirators who mean to make the oldest daughter, Saraiyu, the first raka queen in three centuries. She will encounter the charming, ruthless Prince Bronau, and make the acquaintance of a very unusual crow, Nawat. She thinks she is immune to passion and that her magical Sight, inherited from her father and strengthened by her mother's blood, will help to warn her of any trouble. She does not understand that Kyprioth's plans for her are not what he says they are, or that more than one kind of peril awaits a slave girl who could walk away from her slavery at any time, if she wished to. Where will her loyalties be at summer's end?--if she's still alive.
[edit] Trickster's Queen
In the spring after the events of Trickster's Choice, Aly and the Balitangs return to the capital of Rajmuat, to drastically different lives. Young Elsren Balitang is now heir to King Dunevon; both boys are five years old. Mequen's dragon great-aunt Nuritin has established herself in the Balitang townhouse, now that her great-nephew is dead, to guide Winnamine, Sarai, and Dove on their new life at court, establishing alliances for Elsren. The outer isles are showing signs of revolt, as is Rajmuat itself. Ulasim, the head footman, now moves into his own as the farsighted general of the rebellion, with Fesgao as his warchief, Chenaol as armorer, and Ochobu and her fellow mage Ysul coordinating the magical side of the struggle.
At the heart of it all is Aly, now coordinating her own trained spies as they embark on a program of psychological warfare and sabotage in the capital and the palace. Aly's partially romantic relationship with Nawat, the former crow, is also in trouble. He needs work to keep him busy, but there is little demand for a fletcher in the city, and Aly continues to see his usefulness primarily in crow terms. The trickster god Kyprioth is there, too, stirring things up, trying to heighten the rebels' progress before his fellow gods Mithros and the Great Mother can return to put a halt to his comeback.
As the rebellion builds, new players come Aly's way. First there is the man called Topabaw, for years the master of the Isles' spies and the bogeyman with which luarin and raka nursemaids alike threaten their charges if they misbehave. Aly soon comes to see that for the raka rebels and their co-conspirators to take her city, she must first destroy Topabaw, who everyone believes is indestructible. She also finds another potential foe in the captain of King Dunevon's personal guards, a big, personable fellow named Taybur Sibigat, who realizes Aly is up to something the moment he lays eyes on her. Aunt Nuritin proves to be more than just a fierce chaperone. There are new additions to Aly's pack of spies. And old friends, or rather, new incarnations of old friends come into the picture when Aly receives a delightful present from her aunt: a collection of the small, glob-like creatures called darkings, who played such a pivotal role in The Immortals. As they are quick to tell her, what one of them knows, they all know.
The Balitang ladies are busy, too. Dove, tired of waiting for an invitation, includes herself in a meeting of the heads of the raka rebellion, and goes right to work helping to smooth her sister's path to the throne. Sarai still is not aware of the rebellion's purpose. She only knows that people turn out to see her whenever she rides with her noble friends and with her family. Both they and Winnamine are treading very carefully at court, where King Dunevon's regents are on the alert for any challenge to their power, and growing tired of kowtowing to their five-year-old charge. They will stop at nothing to ensure their grip on power in the Isles, unless the raka prophecy is true at last, and the Twice-Royal Queen is ready to return rule to the native people of the Isles.
Aly, her friends, and her foes, have a long, complex struggle before them as they encounter success, failure, and sudden surprises, because no one person, or god, can control everything everywhere throughout the Isles. There are all kinds of mistakes to be made, allegiances to develop, and battles to endure until the world knows, once and for all, who will be the Trickster's Queen.
