I finished Lady Knight one day after finishing Squire. I absolutely inhaled that last book in the series. Tamora Pierce did well, as I’ve come to expect. The story of Lady Knight felt more satisfying in so many ways, but I don’t think it would have felt that good without Squire there to lay the foundation for it.

If you’re recommending these books to kids, it’s worth noting that Lady Knight bridges a big (and fascinating) gap in genre, content, and target audience age. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give these books to kids—I think you should! But you may want to read them yourself, and be ready for the way in which the story’s tone shifts near the end of Squire and throughout Lady Knight.

Prior to Lady Knight the series was consistently middle grade. Throughout Squire the story slowly grows from middle grade into young adult, with the genre and content maturing alongside our protagonist Kel. The transition in Squire is gradual, with several pronounced shifts that are woven in over time.

Those shifts are marked by the violent consequences of past actions, the grim banality and brutality of Kel’s first brush with warfare, and the growing realization that horrible things are happening beyond our characters’ control. At the very end of Squire we’re given a few hints of how grim things will become. Yet the story remains an arc of growing maturity, a celebration of reaching adulthood and achieving Kel’s long-held dreams.

Lady Knight, then, feels much like adult fantasy. Kel’s adulthood arrives, and brings with it fears and dangers that child-Kel hadn’t fully understood or felt. Hammering that home, the end of Squire and all of Lady Knight feels tonally comparable to mil-fic in many ways, reminding me of The Black Company in places. Yet it remains grounded at all times in the world and the characters that we’ve come to love—characters that we remember being children. That combination is potent; these are the same characters and world that we can remember being so (relatively) consequence-free. In Lady Knight consequences come home to roost. The world quickly comes to feel fraught and risky. People that we care about die. That shift feels heavy in a way that an always-adult series cannot deliver.

Lady Knight is a well written and carefully thought through book. It’s deeply satisfying. The awfulness that Kel faces only makes the heroism she (and others) show feel all the more important and impressive. The sad and bad elements of the story offer a depth of emotional and tonal contrast that wouldn’t be present without them.

Furthermore, it’s Kel’s (and her friends’) growth into adulthood and the transition from more childlike ideas about the world to a more adult awareness during Squire that really anchors this depth for me. Squire is the connective tissue that holds together the brighter, happier, simpler tone of the early elements of Kel’s story and the pathos, sadness, loss, and deep purpose and drive of Kel’s later story. Kel’s fierce dedication and ironclad sense of justice and honor is true throughout, the skeleton on which the story rests.

Do I recommend these books? Yes. Absolutely.

They’re fun. They’ll pull you along for the ride. If you’re trying to help a young reader bridge the gap between younger fiction and more mature fiction, these will help. I’d recommend them alongside Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series (starting with So You Want To Be A Wizard).