Reread 9/5/2020 via the Trini Alvarado audiobook

Not changing my rating because I love a lot about this book, but the amount of othering and racism is such a problem. I don't think it would be a full five stars for me without the nostalgia factor. The audiobook aspect was fine, but the accents are still not great. At least with this book there weren't many (or even any, perhaps) awful British accents. The Bazhir accent didn't really resemble anything recognizable so it didn't bother me as much as the British ones.

***

This book was as fantastic as I remember it. The relationships and romance in this book are what make it truly special to me, and it's the romance in this that I remember from the series as a whole. The rest of the story is a departure from the main arc of the books, but Jonathan and Alanna's relationship in this was just masterfully done.

The white savior trope is a huge problem in this book, though. I was too young when I originally read these to understand it at the time (though I did notice it in some of Pierce's other work), but it's pretty awful here. The main reasons I left this at 5 stars instead of knocking it down for that were because Alanna does at one point recognize the strength of the Bazhir women and her own apprentices stand up to her in refusing to remove their veils (also nostalgia, won't lie). That doesn't solve the problem and it's definitely something to be discussed when this book is read, but it was still 5 stars for me.