Keladry
Basic Appearance: very light brownish hair, hazel eyes
Personality: determined to do everything to the best of her abilities, has been taught to hide her emotions
Story:
Keladry wants to follow in Alanna's footsteps and become a knight. Her appearance in Tortal brings us back to many familiar characters.
Kel is a wonderful young woman who not only wishes to serve King Jonathan, but feels the need to protect whatever animals or humans are being treated wrongly.
Protector Of The Small
First Test
Review: This adorable book is wonderful to read and very hard to put down, especially for long-time fans of Tortall. Here, readers are introduced to great new characters and briefly reunited with charaters from the previous quartets. King Jonathan makes a few appearances. In the beginning, Alanna's makes clear her exitement about a new girl wanting to be a knight. And later in the book, Keladry meets Daine and Numair.
Keladry is the first girl since Alanna who wants to be a knight (or at least the first girl whose family will let her). Unlike the Lioness, Kel doesn't have to pretend to be a boy in order to get in to the school. She is however placed on probation for her first year by Lord Wyldon, the weapons trainer who is very skeptical about her chances of making it.
In book 1 of Kel's story, she must prove to Lord Wyldon, and everyone else who doesn't believe in her, that a girl can make it. In this year she makes friends with a few other pages, such as Neal (a fifteen-year-old first-year) and Cleon (a third-year page) and a flock of sparrows that live at the palace.
She makes efforts to stop bullies among the pages and starts to work on overcoming her fear of heights.
Page
Review: Kel is finally off her year of probation and on her way to becoming a squire. This book tells readers of her adventures, schooling, friends and foes, and ups and downs of being a page.
New characters include a small dog with many battle scars, who Lord Wyldon takes a liking to. And if he knows that the dog who's been coming along to weapons practice is somebody's forbidden pet, he never lets on. And Kel is introduced to a young servant girl who is frequently harrassed by cruel young nobles. She takes her in as a personal servant and starts teaching her how to defend herself.
Just like the first one, this book is unputdownable. (I don't care if that's not a word. It's a word if I say it's a word.)
Squire
Review: This is definately the best of the series so far. It makes it to my favorites list (of all books) as well.
Kel is finally a squire and at first she doesn't think she will be chosen. Then, Lord Raoul of Goldenlake takes her. Suddenly, Kel not only gets to do the field work she's been hoping for, but she's doing it as a part of the King's Own. Meanwhile, Neal is chosen by Alanna, and though she's jealous at first she realizes it's for the best.
There is so much action in this book and the excitement never ends. This book is for those of you while reading the first two thought "this is cute, but I wonder when something's really going to happen." It all starts happening in this book.
Lady Knight
Kel doesn't know where the man is who she saw as a vision in the Chamber of the Ordeal. The Nothing Man, she calls him, and she knows she must find him to stop the murder of children to make killing devices. Instead of getting assigned to combat, Lord Wyldon puts Kel in charge of a refugee camp. Kel worries that this will keep her from goal, but she is the only person Wyldon trusts enough to take care of so many refugees.
Kel is reporting news and supply needs to Wyldon, when her young servant Tobe shows exhausted, having run all the way there nonstop. Kel knows what this means. Her camp, Haven, has been attacked. When she arrives back, her camp is destroyed. There is death everywhere, including many of her good people, some Scanran soldiers, and a few enemy killing devices. But some most of the people are just gone.
Against orders Kel rushes off to find her lost people. Upon realizing she is gone, some of her friends choose to follow her, including Tobe,Owen, Merrick, and Neal. Lord Raoul has also secretly sent Dom and his squad to help her. Though she worries for their safety, Kel is glad to have some companions since one person alone on this mission probably could not have survived for very long.
This is a very engaging novel and includes famaliar characters like Numair and Daine. Daine makes the animals in Haven able to understand humans so they can scout and fight to help defend their camp. A handful of them come along to help Kel find her people to free them from slavery. I love the cat that sticks with them until the end. She's one of my favorite characters. There are also many new characters in this book that will make their way into your heart, like Tobe (young servant), Loesia, and Gydo (refugee girls).
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