Alanna: The First Adventure
core novel 1983 Tortall
Record
| First published | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.27 (138,512 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780689309946 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Alanna: The First Adventure opens the Song of the Lioness quartet in the kingdom of Tortall, where custom forbids girls from training as knights. Alanna of Trebond, unwilling to accept a future confined to a convent, strikes a bargain with her twin brother Thom, who wants to study sorcery rather than fight: she will disguise herself as a boy and take his place as a royal page, while he takes hers at a school for mages. With her old nurse and her family's man-at-arms in on the secret, Alanna begins training among the palace pages, befriending Prince Jonathan and the thief George Cooper. As she pushes through the physical demands of page training while concealing her sex, she must also come to terms with a frightening gift for healing magic, and grows wary of Jonathan's cousin, the powerful and ambitious Duke Roger.
Where it sits
- Universe: Tortall
- Series: Song of the Lioness core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Tamora Pierce
Awards (verified)
- Margaret A. Edwards Award (Career Award (YALSA)), 2013: won; ALA/YALSA's own citation names 'Song of the Lioness series and The Protector of the Small quartet' explicitly; recorded against Alanna: The First Adventure (the flagship opening novel) as the representative work since the award spans two series rather than one book.
Notes
- From the series record (Song of the Lioness): Alanna of Trebond's quartet; the founding sequence of Tortall.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Song of the Lioness: position 1 of 4: next In the Hand of the Goddess (1984)
- Internal chronology, within Tortall: position 1 of 14: next In the Hand of the Goddess (1984)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Lioness
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanna:_The_First_Adventure
- https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2013/01/tamora-pierce-wins-2013-edwards-award-song-lioness-series-and-protector-small
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