Aly is the daughter of Alanna the Lioness, Tortall's champion knight, but her gifts run in a different direction entirely: she is a spy born, sharp-minded and quick-tongued, happiest in the shadows. Captured by pirates and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the Copper Isles, she makes a reckless wager with Kyprioth, the trickster god — keep young noblewomen Sarai and Dove safe for a summer and win her freedom. The task should be simple. The Copper Isles are a powder keg, and Aly is standing next to the spark.

Aly combines her mother's courage with her father's tactical genius, and her voice is sharp, funny, and disarmingly self-aware — she knows exactly what she is doing and why, which makes the moments when she is genuinely surprised all the more effective. Nawat, her love interest, is one of the most charming and unusual romantic leads in Tamora Pierce's catalogue: a crow learning to be human, earnest and strange in equal measure.

Across two books, Aly moves from reluctant slave to architect of revolution, building a spy network from nothing while navigating treacherous court politics, a romance with the half-crow shapeshifter Nawat, and the slow, devastating realization that the revolution she is helping to build will cost more than she bargained for. Tamora Pierce charts Aly's growth from a girl running away from her mother's legacy into a woman who chooses — fully, deliberately — to build her own. The duology is a master class in political fantasy for YA readers.