** spoiler alert ** I liked this quartet as much as I do the rest of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books. (They automatically get 5 stars because Tortall is all wrapped up with fuzzy childhood feelings for me.) It took me a while to actually read this series, though, because I was too afraid that it would read exactly like the Alanna quartet. Fortunately, Kel's story, though similar to Alanna's, was refreshingly different.

First, the focus of Kel's knight training is much more on team work than was Alanna's story of the lone knight heroine. Kel must learn to lead a squad and then command an entire refugee camp, doing such inglorious tasks as ordering supplies and helping to plow fields. While Alanna journies to find the Domion Jewel alone and takes on evil wizards alone, all of Kel's successes come because she knows how to successfully lead and work with those around her - animal and human (because what would a story about Tortall be if there weren't highly intelligent animals involved?).

Another interesting difference is the approach towards gender identity in each series. Alanna, forced to hide her gender from everyone, first fights against her developing body, bemoaning the fact that she has to be and become a girl. Her struggle is to accept her gender identity and incorporate it into her idea of herself. In contrast, Kel doesn't need to hide the fact that she is a girl going for her shield. Instead, her challenge is being the ONLY girl in a male dominated field. She has to put up with insults and slanders against her sex and learns early on that she does not want to DENY the fact that she is a girl. She purposefully wears dresses to dinner to remind everyone that she is a girl.

Another interesting difference is that Kel has only one short and rather unheated relationship (they're too busy and then too far away doing knightly duties to really do much more than sneak in the occasional kiss). Alanna on the other hand has quite a string of rather heated love affairs while she tries to figure out how to balance her various desires - for love (for lack of a better word) and for her shield. In contrast, Kel has a couple crushes but is much more focused on her knightly tasks, and the books end without pairing her off nicely with the most available boy (something that it seems like almost EVERY ya book is doing these days).

On another note, I found it strangely jarring to read about the adult Alanna (as I do whenever she pops up in another Tortall story). She seems so much more .... grizzled and hard than I read her during her own stories.

A big 5 stars for the Protector of the Small series.