Twilight has officially ruined EVERYTHING!

This post contains spoilers for Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness Quartet series.  Beware.  Also, I am having the worst time getting this to format correctly.  So I apologize if the spacing is off.  I've spent far too much time trying to fix this.

So, I was browsing through Barnes and Noble a couple days ago with a friend of mine and she convinced me to go over the the young adult section to look for some books.  I don't really like the YA section anymore.  Too much Twilight and too many Twilight clones.  Of course, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section isn't much better which is probably why I spent more time at used bookshops these days than Barnes and Noble or Borders.  Anyway, my friend points out that Tamora Pierce's Tortall and Other Lands has just been released and she's really excited about that.  I am less so only because I am super behind on keeping up on series that I love and I haven't read Bloodhound or Melting Stones yet and I really need to do that.

But that is not the point of this post.  No, the point is that Pierce's original series, Song of the Lioness, has been republished again.  New covers ahoy! (Books 1, 2 and 4)

Now, these seem pretty cool.  The fourth cover is gorgeous (Even though it looks more urban fantasy than actual fantasy with Alanna more in a leather jacket than armor, but whatever).  And it's so cool that Alanna is still going strong after more than 25 years.  But then... I saw the third cover.

What. The. Fuck.

Dear Atheneum, have you even read the book?  I assume you must have because you originally published the books in 1983-1988 and you gave us spectacular covers like this:

 

 

See.  Those covers a true to the books.  First off, they make it absolutely clear that these are fantasy books.  Unlike the third and fourth books of the new covers which kinda scream urban fantasy (especially the third).  And jeez, while I'm at it-- Jonathan (I think the one on the right is supposed to be Jonathan) looks like a vampire when he's actually a very living prince and, you know, not an emo douche.  And George (I think the one on the left is supposed to be George) looks like a high school drop when he's actually the King of Thieves and, you know, not a bum.  Gah!  Horrible.

But more importantly, the original covers and all those that come after (except these) are true to who Alanna is.  She is the hero and when you come down to it-- she's all about Alanna.  The new cover for the third book makes it seem like she's all about which boy she chooses which... no.  Just, no.  The Song of the Lioness Quartet is never about Team Jonathan or Team George or even Team Liam.  It's about Team Alanna.  It's about Alanna doing what's best for Alanna.  There is no all consuming, passionate, heart breaking choice in Woman who Rides like a Man.  Earlier than halfway through the book, Alanna kicks Jonathan to the curve because he's trying to make life changing decisions for her.  Towards the end, she gets together with George but parts ways with him simply because they're going in different directions.  Alanna does what's best for her and no one-- not Jonathan or George-- can sway her mind from it.

Just to give you an idea of how that cover flies in the face of everything that is Alanna, look at these other covers.  First is the covers I bought when I first found these books in 1999.

Here are the covers for the reprint that occurred just after this:

 

 

And here are the covers that came after those:

Notice something?  Like how Alanna is always alone?  This is the first cover where Alanna hasn't been standing alone and that goes against everything she is.  These books are her story.  Jonathan and George barely factor in and Alanna never-- EVER!-- puts her personal happiness aside for either boy (unlike the rash of 'heroines' that seem to populate YA fiction these days and are defined by their men).  Tamora Pierce has said in many interviews that she originally wrote Alanna/Jonathan into the end of the second book, but ended up rewriting it because she knew that Alanna would be miserable as a queen.  And that is what makes Alanna so powerful as a heroine.  She may have loved Jonathan.  Heck, he may have even been her true love, but she walked away from him because she knew that no amount of love would make her happy in the life she would have to lead with Jonathan.  She didn't want to be Queen-- she wanted to be a knight.  And no one-- not even someone she loved-- was going to make her give that up.

I was 12 when I first read Alanna's books.  Eleven years ago, there wasn't much in the way of kickass heroines and even though she was over 15 years old and Tamora pieces and written several other pieces with kick ass heroines, Alanna was still standing alone.  She was still in a league of her own.  She was a leader waiting for other books to follow in her footsteps.  Alanna was so important to my development not only as a feminist but as a person.  She showed me that happiness comes from you-- not from other people and that is a message that still isn't getting sent to young girls.  25 years later, Alanna is still desperately needed.

I think what breaks my heart the most is that there are likely a lot of young girls looking for Alanna.  They are looking for a strong heroine who defines her own happiness and doesn't let anyone define it for her.  And they will look at this cover and see another heroine defined by two men and may pass by the greatest heroine they could ever know.  And that thought makes me sad.

And perhaps the most infuriating part about this is that Song of the Lioness doesn't need a Twilightesque update in order to sell.  Alanna has been selling fine for 25+ years.  This is such a bunch of bullshit.

Sidenote:  Speaking of bullshit, there has been a lot of talk on book blogs lately about recently released books about colored heroes printed with white characters on the cover.  There has been a big bruhaha over it lately with book bloggers calling bullshit and publishers throwing out the ludicrous claim that books with colored characters don't sell.  That brings us to the new covers of of Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series (which I can't get to format- blah).

How interesting that the two chracters of color out of the core four (Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar), one is so heavily cloaked and the other is so heavily shadowed that you can't really tell the color of their skin.  Especially when compared with how visible Sandry and Tris' whiteness is.  And saying that books with characters of color on the cover doesn't sell is absolute bullshit, because the Circle series has had two lovely colors with Daja on the cover and Briar was on three and I don't remember in the past 10 years ever going to a bookstore and not seeing those books on the shelves.  So clearly the Circle series was doing just fine.  And, the cloaking of Daja is particularly henious when you factor in the revelation in The Will of the Emperess that Daja is a lesbian.

Here are the original covers which, I think we can all agree, were better.

Shame on you Scholastic and shame on you Atheneum.  How dare you do this to some of the most progressive books ever written.  How dare you make Alanna dependent on the men in her life and how dare you other Briar and Daja like that.  What could possibly make you think that a book that had been in print for 25 years needed a Twilight reboot?  Do you honestly think that Twilight is still going to be around in 25 years?  Why the sudden belief that characters of color wouldn't sell books after Daja and Briar's books have been around for 15 years.  If that doesn't convince you, what will?

Buy Tamora Pierce's books, people, because they are amazing.  All of them.  And that is why these new covers make me so sad.  Because they go against everything that Pierce's books are:  Feminist, Progressive and an absolute joy to read.

... I need to find Bloodhound now.  Ditto to you people.  Why are you still reading me when you could be reading Tamora Pierce?