Disguised as a boy, Alanna of Trebond becomes a squire, to none other than the prince of the realm. But Prince Jonathan is much more to Alanna; he is her ally, her best friend, and one of the few who knows that she's really a girl. Now it will take all of Alanna's awesome skill, strength, and growing magical powers to protect him from the mysterious evil sorcerer who is bent on his destruction, and hers!
Here continues the story of Alanna, a young woman bound for glory who is willing to fight against enormous odds for what she believes in.
This is book two in The Song of the Lioness series so if you do not want to be spoiled in what happens in book one, Alanna: The First Adventure (linked here), I recommend not continuing to read this review. However, there will be no spoilers for In The Hand of the Goddess.
5 STARS
I love this series so much. Like the first book, I've read this one before bu I remembered less about this one than Alanna: The First Adventure. Everything was new and a surprise to me and I loved every minute of it. I listened to the audiobook like I did last time and I loved it just as much. The narrator, Trini Alvarado does a fantastic job and I love her voice.
I love the characters so much. Each book so far has been about four years of Alanna's life between the ages of 10-18, so although the books are fairly short we are spanning a long period of time. I think it's done really well but I have read reviews where they are not the biggest fan of the way we jump time. I see it more as short stories strung together. I really enjoy this style and think it is the best fit for the reader to get the necessary story. I not only love Alanna's growth but the growth of her friends and their friendships. In the last book we know that a couple of her friends know her secret of actually being a woman and we get to see that new dynamic come into play more in this book. I love her friendships between her and Jon and George. And Gary has become a personal favorite of mine. We don't see much of Raoul this book which was unfortunate because I loved him in the first one. I also loved our new addition to the gang, Faithful. I love the idea of a witch or sorcerer having a familiar and Faithful is such a great companion for Alanna.
The plot was great. It did take me about fifty pages to really get into the story but I had no problem sitting back and listening to the audiobook. I love the action parts in this book and I found myself freaking out while reading at times. The downfall of listening to an audiobook is that you can only make the narrator read so quickly and I was dying to speed read just to know what was happening. However, I am glad I was forced to slow down because I feel like I would have missed something. I really enjoyed seeing Alanna start to mature into herself and as she was becoming a late teen she is interested in things she swore she'd never be interested in when she was younger. I am very excited to see what happens in the next story especially now that we are at a part of the story where we are venturing into the unknown.
Overall, I highly recommend this series. I think it's such a well written and beautifully told story. I cannot recommend the audiobooks enough either. I wish I had read this book series when I was younger because I know for sure I would have loved it. I stand by my statement in my last review that this series gives me the same warmth and happiness I get when I read Harry Potter. Although they're not even close to the same story at all, both stories have this innocence to them. They hold great messages, talk about darker topics, and have great characters because they're written by fantastic writers.
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