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First Test / Page / Squire / Lady Knight
Protector of the Small Quartet, Books 1-4

Author: Tamora Pierce
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Brief Summary:
Fifteen years after Alanna (from the first Tortall series by Pierce) became the first female knight in hundreds of years and the king once again allowed women to become pages, the first girl actually tries out for knighthood. This brave girl's name is Keladry of Mindelan, who firmly believes she has it in her to become a knight of the realm. Unlike Alanna (who pretended to be a boy), everyone knows Kel is a girl all along, which makes her predicament infinitely more difficult in a lot of respects. The series follows Kel from the age of ten in First Test through the attainment of her knighthood in the final book, Lady Knight.

Review:
This series has a lot in common with Pierce's other Tortall books, such as a number of characters. Alanna, Daine, Numair and Lord Raoul (among many others) all make frequent appearances. One of the things that is so nice about these fantasy authors who stick to a particular world is that you can see favorite characters return without being done to death (either figuratively or literally) in their own series.

The books are definitely comparable to the Alanna quartet, but they have some major differences. The Protector of the Small books focus much more on the military aspects than on magic or romance. Battles abound, so girls who want to see a lady kick some ass would be well advised to give this series a shot. Alanna (for all she was pretending to be a boy through much of the series) got a lot of action (wink wink nudge nudge), whereas Kel is much less driven by that. In the series she has only one beau and only for a small portion of the series comparatively. The ending of the series suggests that more of Kel's story remains to be told. I, for one, would not be averse to reading it.