The Immortals

As a kid, I loved The Immortals Series. It has a strong female lead, an emotional back story, a gripping plot, and each book is always a fun and interesting journey. Essentially, this was my favorite book series as a child and I read it over and over. Diane, the 13-year-old main character, does what every animal-lover would love to do: talks to animals and transforms into animals... even now I shudder with jealousy at her awesomeness. Should I have children, someone better stop me from throwing

As a kid, I loved The Immortals Series. It has a strong female lead, an emotional back story, a gripping plot, and each book is always a fun and interesting journey. Essentially, this was my favorite book series as a child and I read it over and over. Diane, the 13-year-old main character, does what every animal-lover would love to do: talks to animals and transforms into animals... even now I shudder with jealousy at her awesomeness. Should I have children, someone better stop me from throwing this down their throats and yelling "you will enjoy this!"

That being said, I recently re-read this series over again and found that (not-surprisingly) the character's voice and actions can be... childish. So while lovely as it is, it is a children's book, and there it will stay. However, one thing I found disturbing, even as a kid reading this, was Diane and Numair's love in the 4th novel (The Realm of the Gods). Diane was 16 years old and Numair was 27 years old... while I understand this is a different time, being medieval and all, it was disconcerting considering how "modern" the whole series is (for example, the book series condones slavery, celebrates the freedom of choice, and champions women's rights). But truly, that is my only complaint about this whole series. It was a great read, thank you Tamora Pierce!

p.s. Because I was thinking about this, I google searched Tamora Pierce's thoughts on this matter of the age difference between Numair & Diane, and here they are:

"In some ways, Numair is emotionally far younger than his age (he’s 27, actually), and Daine is much older than her years emotionally. It didn’t feel wrong to me. If their relationship had begun this way, it would have been beyond creepy, but it happened when Daine was no longer his student, but his traveling companion and co-worker. He regards her as his magical equal, and in her field, she is. Also, and this is something I end up saying time after time, this is a medieval period, when it was far more common for young women to marry much older men (who had established themselves in life and could afford to support a wife). I mention as often as I can in the books that 16 is the age to marry among the lower classes, and some marry even younger. I really cheat in some ways by having noblewomen marry at 18, when in our world they might marry at 9 or 10! Very rarely was a woman able to marry someone her own age.I’m sorry if this still makes you uncomfortable, but the truth is that none of my editors or my agent, who are very careful people, ever mentioned anything. I have promised my fans I won’t have such a large gap between romantic characters again, though! (Can I help it I like older men and always have?!)"

- Tamora Pierce