In the Hand of the Goddess

In the Hand of the Goddess is the second book in the "Song of the Lioness" books by Tamora Pierce. It continues Alanna's story as she pretends to be a boy to become a knight. But now that she is Jonathan's squire, things become more complicated. Love ensues between Alanna and two of our heroes--sappy love triangle without being overly awful. But now that she has saved her prince from demons, more things are coming after her. She doesn't know where from though Roger is constantly on her thoughts. War also ensues and she is finally set out to battle with her prince. Someone doesn't like her and betrayals are inevitable. She goes through the Ordeal of Knighthood and not long after she is found out, as she was planning on doing anyway after she was knighted.

It's a fun adventure that has something constantly happening to Alanna. From duels gone wrong to hunting parties where sorcery  is involved. If you aren't a fan of the love triangle, which is here in the book, this one is still okay to read. It's not heavy in the love and cheesy scenes, I always thought they were cute anyway so long as George was in the picture.

It jumped around a lot. It's a small book with less than 300 easy to read pages. But those pages held four years. I felt like most of the time we were skipping months at a time. I'm used to having books take their time and having things maybe take a few months. This felt kind of bumpy to me and I wanted more.

As I said in my previous post, it is a younger YA novel. A series that got me into reading that would be appropriate for a younger audience.

I feel rather redundant in this post as my last one. The characters are the same in basics.... I guess they haven't changed much, as one would assume they would have in four/eight years and going to war. The boys became more girl crazy at ball dances, but there wasn't much progression for them. Supposedly Alanna was learning how to love and be loved, but that wasn't as prominent as the beginning was leading it to be.

The next book is "The Woman Who Rides Like A Man."