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Monday, January 9, 2012

Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce

Aly wants to be a spy like her father but both of her parents refuse to let her go into the field. She decides to visit a relative and is captured by pirates and sold to a noble family. She sees an opportunity to begin her spy training when the god, Kyprioth, comes and makes a deal with her. He’ll convince her parents to let her be a spy if she keeps the two daughters of the family she was sold to alive. Aly ends up using all her spy skills and more to keep them safe.

Aly is an independent head-strong character. She doesn’t change much in the story except to learn to believe in herself and see her parents and her behavior to them in a more mature way. Her father and grandfather have been training her to be a spy and she helps him translate coded. She’s bored and looking for adventure which she finds.

Aly is discovering what it is like to be a woman and is falling for crow-boy, Nawat. They kiss. While most of the story is entertaining, one part has Aly telling the family’s children age 4 and up a dumb story about her mom being annoyed by a menagerie and chasing the birds away with no clothes on (which the guards liked). There is some violence. Aly gets herself beat up so that she would not have to be sold to a family where the man would bed her. People get stabbed and attacked. There is no ending. It setups for the sequel, Trickster’s Queen. The Middle School library has the book if you are interested – ask at the circulation desk. This book is similar to Graceling except Aly is more of a jokester. A fun adventure with magic and political intrigue.

Reading Level 6.5
:-):-):-) 3 out of 5 Smileys

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