First Test

First Test is a fantasy novel by Tamora Pierce, published in 1999, and the first book of the Protector of the Small quartet set in the medieval realm of Tortall. It follows Keladry of Mindelan, the first girl to take up the training that had been opened to girls a decade earlier and left unused ever since.

Kel arrives at the training camp knowing exactly what she is walking into. The training master, Lord Wyldon, does not believe girls belong among the pages, and rather than refusing her outright he puts her on a year's probation: she may stay only if she survives the schedule and the hostility of the older boys without giving him an excuse to remove her.

Pierce had already written a quartet about a girl who disguised herself as a boy to become a knight, and this series is built on the difference that Kel is not hiding anything. The novel spends its time on the actual work of training and on the loyalty and bullying of the other pages, and it ends with the question of probation answered and the next year waiting.