Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Lady Knight

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Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce

7 reviews

robotnik's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Lady Knight is the last hurrah of Lady Keladry of Mindelan, the first known lady knight in Tortall in over a century. With the war against Scanra underway, Kel assumes she's going to be put to combat, especially after the Chamber of the Ordeal gives her a task - to fight and kill the Nothing Man that's been responsible for the mysterious killing machines that Scanra has at their disposal. To her dismay, Kel is put in charge of a refugee camp where she won't be able to go off and find the Nothing Man, and help put an end to the war.

I love Kel. She's my favorite Pierce protagonist by far. I find there's something so real about her that she's easy to relate to, even if I'm nothing like her. Most young adult protagonists in her situation would break rank and run off to fulfill their Destiny(tm). Kel doesn't. She's been given a task and, as much as she hates it, she's going to do it one hundred and ten percent because that's what knights do. I find that admirable in her. Yeah, she could have run off on the back of her trusty stead and saved the day, ending the war and maybe becoming a hero like Destiny(tm) wants her to. But, no. She's going to deal with people bitching at her all day, she's going to clean the latrines, she's going to hope that the enemy doesn't come in force at her because she's not equipped to deal with it but hell if she's going to let them take her people without a fight.

The addition of the Haven characters are lovely. They're all so lovely.

So much sadness after what happened to a lot of them. That part really hits you deep. I know, I read Pierce's Author Notes at the end of the book and how she was writing this one during 9/11 and how the scene was always going to happen, but how that event still affected her writing. It just makes it hurt a little more.

Kel eventually does go after her people after they've been ransacked and kidnapped while she was away for a couple of days. This time, she's expressly disobeying orders because she was told the first time to look after and protect them, and she'd be damned if she let the Scanrans kill or enslave any of them. I love the moment when the others decide that they're going after her. With the exception of Neal and Merric, who are stationed at Haven with her, we rarely got to see any of her friends as they were separated throughout Squire and nearly the entirety of this book. But, it just goes to show the bond that they have, and that Kel managed to instill such loyalty in people who, by society's rights, she shouldn't be getting along with when they were only teens is amazing and wonderful and I just love all the friendships in this book, okay.

The ending is befitting of Kel's last book. It's not glamorous and doesn't seem very heroic, and she's probably covered in dirt and looks like hell through most of the climax, but that's just Kel. And, it ends on a note that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I really love this book, no matter how many times I've read it. It's a perfect cap to an amazing character and their story, and leaves things open for more in the future, one of which will be very bright for her.

Gods all bless, Lady Knight.

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jessereadsthings's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

4.0

Definitely my favorite in the series and in the Tortall book so far. The part where Kel returns to a ruined Haven made me genuinely emotional. Though I do wish the rest of the books had lived up to this one in my reread.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Finishing off the Protector of the Small quartet, LADY KNIGHT is an excellent end to a good series. It's the story of Kel's first big assignment as a knight: running Haven, a refugee camp near the border with Scanra. In her Ordeal of knighthood she was given a task by the Chamber, and chafes at the feeling that running the camp is holding her back from going after the man killing children and turning them into strange metal monsters. There are new storylines related to her time running Haven, and her care of Tobe, a boy with horse magic. I don't think anything is both introduced and resolved here, since the biggest rescue relates to the task the Chamber set her in SQUIRE. Technically a great many characters' storylines are "resolved" through death, but those who are met and then later killed are nearly as many as those whose first mention on the page is when Kel finds their bodies.

As the final book in the quartet it leaves open the idea that Kel and her comrades will have further deeds when this is done, and it settles what she'll do after Haven. It resolves the magical threat posed by the killing machines, and gives an idea of what her friends will do next. It teases a few things that could happen later for secondary characters, but these won't necessarily show up in future Tortall stories.

Kel is still the narrator, with the exception of a brief section from someone else's perspective. She definitely sounds older than the first two books, and her characterization in LADY KNIGHT is consistent with the end of SQUIRE. Other than the fact that Kel was set a task before the book begins, this is self contained enough that it could mostly make sense if someone read it without any of the other books. It covers only a few months, rather than years, and focuses on events within a small area once it gets going. The ending will definitely be more satisfying for someone who at least read SQUIRE, but there's still a lot to love for any readers who try starting here (especially if they're familiar with Tortall as a setting from other series).

Kel has grown up a lot but is very aware of how much she still has to learn. She has a lot of strong relationships which get a chance to pay off here. She's not hanging out with people as much, since her duties and her organization of the refugees take the narrative place that training filled in the earlier books. However, Neal, Dom, and Owen have a strong presence, and I'm fairly confident that this has more of Merric than the rest of the series combined. The animals play an even bigger role this time, made possible by some help from Daine.

The worldbuilding focuses on the logistics of running Haven, as Kel begins having to to many things herself and gradually gets infrastructural support and clerks to make some aspects easier. There's some detail about the war, but as the fourth book of a quartet set in a world already filled with stories, it doesn't pause to explain quite as many things as the earlier books did. There's still enough to make the relevant things make sense, and it works overall.

The plot is the most focused of the quartet. Kel has two main things she needs to accomplish, and she works on running Haven until she gets the information she needs to act on the directions from the Chamber. I enjoyed the process of turning Haven into a defensible position filled with confident civilians who know how to defend themselves. The story conveys the shape of Kel's days without dragging, never letting go of the need to stop the source of the killing machines as soon as she can.

Content Warnings