Alanna – The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce is the first book in a series of novels depicting the trials of a teenage human female struggling to attain knighthood. It is based on the somewhat amusing notion that humans cannot easily differentiate the genders of children, as the title character pretends to be male in order to achieve knighthood. Although warrior-women are not unheard of in regressive human societies (indeed, they have a term specifically for them: amazons), the path… Read more.