#first test

Let's start with this quote from the description of the First Test audiobook:

"More timely than ever, The Protector of the Small series is Anti-Bullying 101 while also touching on issues of bravery, friendship, and dealing humanely with refugees against a backdrop of action-packed fantasy adventure."

Anti-Bullying 101

By the time I read PotS for the first time, I was already an adult. And what impressed me about it was how accessible Pierce made very heavy, important topics. First Test begins when its protagonist, Keladry of Mindelan is ten years old, and it centers primarily on bullying and society's response to it. Kel is bullied incessantly by Joren of Stone Mountain and his cronies. She gets into regular fights with them, not only to challenge their bullying of herself, but to challenge their bullying of others. There's a great scene toward the end of the book where Kel's best friend, Neal, challenges her on going out to pick fights with Joren, specifically why she's going alone. And she tells him (as well as the other boys who are listening) that she hasn't asked for help because she didn't think the others thought it was a problem. She thought she had a different perspective because she was a girl.

There's a lot of unpack here. First, the other boys have done nothing to stop the bullying because they've been raised in a society that has taught them it is acceptable. Before Kel starts her page training, her older brother, Anders, warns her that the teachers are not looking for excuses. They don't want to hear that students got into a fight because one was abusing the other. Older pages haze the younger ones, and that's just the way things are. It's the way things have always been. And the best way to get through it is to keep your head down. What's more, Kel is bullied by adults. Lord Wyldon has, at nearly every turn, treated Kel unfairly and turned his back when the boys have bullied her. In one scene, Joren even states that he believes he's doing what Lord Wyldon wants by trying to stop Kel from becoming a knight.

(And yes, I say nearly every turn on purpose. Aside from letting her continue past her probation, if Wyldon does one good thing in First Test, it's allowing Neal to be Kel's sponsor.)

But then there's Kel's perspective, which is partially different because she grew up in the Yamani Islands. Therefore, she (probably) wasn't taught to ignore bullying the way the boys were. But she's also correct that she has a different perspective as a girl, which brings us nicely to Page, where Pierce does the thing that makes these books brilliant: she builds on the foundation she's laid with First Test by framing sexual assault and rape as forms of bullying. 

Yes, First Test does mention gendered violence. Obviously, Kel is bullied because she's a girl. And she talks about Yamani girls being taught to defends themselves against would-be rapists. But Page is where we get to the meat of it, when Kel takes on her maid, Lalasa, who she slowly comes to realize has been abused physically, emotionally, and sexually. And that some of that came at the hands of her family. Pierce does not pull her punches here. She wants you to be horrified by what men have done to Lalasa. And she wants you to know that it is no different from Joren making younger pages mop up spills with their shirts or pick the same books up off the floor over and over again. I don't think I had ever read a book that frames violence against women in this way. I don't know if I have since.

And that's what makes these books hit home over and over again. We often think of topics like sexual assault, rape, and abuse as "heady" themes that our kids aren't ready for. We need to protect them from these problems. Or maybe they're considered too big and complex to understand. But by stating they are forms of bullying, Pierce proves all of that wrong. They are not too heady or complex for children. And they are topics we should be discussing with them. 

PotS not only offers a template for calling out this crap for what it is, but for creating the type of community that rejects it. What's more, she directly shows us that little bullies grow up to be big bullies, which brings us to Squire, when two squires fail to become knights. I remember thinking it a little funny that everyone was like, "we've never had so many people fail!" in reference to two just people, but this time around, I was able to put this into better perspective: there are only six squires undergoing their ordeal. Two is literally one third of the group. What's more, one of them dies in the process, also a first. 

But Pierce doesn't stop there. She reminds us this problem is systemic. And in one of the best scenes in the series, Lord Wyldon resigns from his teaching position because he knows that the failure of these squires is not theirs alone. It also lies in the adults who allowed their childish bullying to persist and grow into the adult form of bullying. Just as she uses the second installment to reframe sexual assault and rape as forms of bullying, she uses her third volume to draw a direct line between the two. Not only are these forms of bullying, she tells us, but these bullies bully people because they learned to do so as children. 

And that brings us to Lady Knight.

Sigh.

I have problems with Lady Knight, okay? The end of Squire introduces these "killing machines" made of metal-coated giant bones, and... they're robots, okay? They're robots. They're robots powered the by souls of little children, and robots showing up three-quarters of the way through my sword and sorcery series is a genre crossover I just can't get on board with!!!

Okay, rant over. Let's proceed with what I like about Lady Knight.

Like Page and Squire, Lady Knight builds on the foundation the previous books have already laid. It continues to deal with matters of sexual violence, but also expands the general theme of abuse of power as a form of bullying. Yes, the other books deal with this some, but Keladry essentially gets the position of running a refugee camp because she's trusted not to abuse her power. And scene after scene after scene shows how people bully those they have power over--whether those people be poor, children, criminals, etc, all the way up to Blayce the Gallan, who I personally think is Tamora Pierce's most chilling villain. And the fact that he is her most chilling villain is the reason I tolerate the necromancy robots. Because he's the guy creating them. And he purposely uses the souls of children, preferably of the age of 12, who he dolls up and pampers before he kills them.... the rest is left to your imagination. 

More Timely Than Ever

And that's the point. Everything from a child trashing someone else's dorm room to the horrors wreaked by Blayce, "The Nothing Man," is bullying. Sexual assault? Bullying. Denying criminals medical care? Bullying. Corporal Punishment? Bullying. I am particularly drawn to the fact that Pierce frames Wyldon's treatment of Kel in the early books as bullying. Because I live in a state where bullying is literally defined as student-on-student behavior--teachers, by definition, do not bully. By definition, bullying only happens between peers. And only between children. But along comes Pierce and says no. Actually, bullying happens where there is a power differential (or a challenge to one.) When people abuse power to make themselves feel bigger. Granted, this is a common theme in Pierce's books--that if you are someone high in the social hierarchy, it's your responsibility to care for people who are lower in the hierarchy than you. We get a lot of this with Sandry in the Circle series. But never does she make it more explicit than in Protector of the Small. Well, of course not, just look at the title.

And I think, on some level, this is why I love reading it. And this is why I needed to read it again. Now. Why couldn't wait a week to get my own copies of the books. And this is the reason I may just read them again before the year is out. Because as I said in a previous review, I read to process, and we're living in a world full of bullies. People who abuse power. People who are mean because they feel like it. Because they can get away with it. Because they feel the need to make themselves bigger. And Kel? Kel is an inspiration. She's the Steve Rogers of Tortall. Every time she gets knocked down, she stands back up. I can do this all day. She is a blueprint not only for how to take back our world against bullies but why. Because for every person Kel defends, every battle she fights, every time she stands back up, she gains another ally.