The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce is the third book in the "Song of the Lioness" series. This one is probably the most "sequal" like book in the series where it feels like not a lot is going on plot wise. Or that the things going on aren't necessarily around Alanna. Things happen, but it would have been nice to see them happen instead of simply Alanna vague "what is happening" moments.

Alanna starts going on adventures at the beginning of the story, but the only one that Pierce presents is Alanna's assimilation into the Bazhir (in my head it always ended up coming out brazier instead, oops), a desert people. Very stereotypical Middle Eastern, much like how many other peoples in these stories. She becomes part of them and starts changing some of the ideas that the older folk believe, namely that women can be warriors, they should have their faces veiled at all times, and the shaman of the Bloody Hawk tribe thinks she's a demon and acts accordingly.

Her love life is what expands in this story. Jonathan, because of their adventures in the first book of the series, is offered a prominent part of the Bazhir culture and spends a lot of time with Alanna, even going so far as to propose. Things become complicated, she finds George who has Rogue complications of his own and things become stagnant.

I would not suggest reading this book during the high of summer because it takes place mostly in the desert. I constantly just felt hot and pretty miserable what with it being June.

This book lacked greatly in my opinion. But you need to read it, if not skim it, for context of the fourth book which is much better. I felt as though Tamora Pierce didn't quite know where to go when it came to book three though she knew where she needed to be for four.

The characters do grow up in this book, though it is only a little. While Alanna obviously has her faults, many of the boys do not. Jon gets kind of snobbery, "because he's a prince" so he's spoiled. George doesn't really have any faults except he likes to collect ears for those who have betrayed him or done him wrong and is a thief--though we don't get much on the side of his thieving. Many of the other side characters feel flat to me still.

Pierce's writing did get better. Her dialogue isn't as childish as it was in the first book. She's been able to get different characters do act differently instead of having the filler characters of Gary and Raoul (at one point when I was first reading I couldn't tell them apart). I do wish she would do better on settings. Yes, it is the desert, but i felt the same as I did for Under A Painted Sky and the lack of setting and description thereof. People have made so many poems of nature over the centuries, why can' they think of something pretty amongst the sand dunes and dried rock? I don't know if they were covered in sand all the time or if they were near a mountain or what. It was almost like <insert "dessert" here> at times. It's okay to let the make up some of the setting in their mind, but descriptions are good too. This is the writer's world we are stepping into, don't let us do all the work (some, yes, but not all). I like to know where I stand.