I liked this duology when I was younger, but never as much as the other Tortall books. And I'd definitely heard discussion of this in regards to the white savior trope. But I don't think I really understood how bad it was until this reread, since it's probably been well over a decade since I revisited these books.

But wow. Aly, a white girl, is transplanted by a god into a different country where she becomes a key part of the rebellion of the Raka people, the Indigenous people of the Copper Isles who have been subjugated by the white conquerors for centuries. Aly basically shows up and teaches them how to keep secrets and properly run their rebellion. She tries to teach them about race relations and how they should treat white people, which is really hard to suffer through when a rich white 17 year old girl is talking about this to a man who has literally been a slave living in his native country under racist laws for his entire life.

There's also black face and just a lot of general discomfort that I honestly can't remember in detail anymore.

Also some very uncomfortable discussions on slavery, and how all these lovely kind people just have slaves and treat them so well. If they treated their slaves that well, perhaps they wouldn't be slaves. But that's just a thought. There are also conversations on how some people prefer to be slaves than to be free and uh perhaps that's because they're literally slaves? There were so many points of this book that were difficult to suffer through.

But I dunno, I think nostalgia for this world and this series kept it at a three star for me. I do quite like the spying aspects. It's fun to see them plotting, and I do enjoy the rebellion aspects. But the race is handled so poorly that it really makes most of the book unpleasant.