Alanna (1983)
Alanna is a 1983 fiction book written by Tamora Pierce.
Alanna of Trebond wants a sword, not a veil. Her twin brother Thom wants spellbooks, not a knight's training. So the two children swap places: Thom leaves for the convent to study sorcery, while Alanna cuts her hair, takes the name Alan, and reports to the palace of King Roald to train as a page. The disguise is only the first trial. Alanna sweats through weapons drills, dodges a cruel older boy, and starts to sense a darker threat moving inside the court. Tamora Pierce opens her Song of the Lioness quartet with grit and hard-won skill.
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A few thoughts on Alanna
A girl passing as a boy to earn her blade rhymes with Disney's Mulan, and the arms-training grind and palace intrigue will land for anyone who likes tactical fantasy war. Watch Mulan for the disguise and the duty, and play Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a knightly academy where students you teach grow into soldiers on a battlefield.
Continue Alanna's own quartet and the story it inspired
Alanna is only the opening move in Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet, and In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant carry her from palace page to knight and beyond. The Afterward picks up the same world once the quest is done, following the ordinary, complicated life a hero has to build once the fighting stops.
Girls who fight their way into a soldier's or knight's world
Alanna cuts her hair and takes a boy's name to earn a place among the palace pages, and that same fight to be taken seriously as a warrior drives Mulan into her father's armor, Kel's open, undisguised push through the ranks in Page, Paksenarrion's hard climb through Divided Allegiance, and Beka Cooper's beat on the streets in Terrier. Empire of Storms gives that same drive a full-grown, battle-tested heroine.
Military academies and knight training grounds across fantasy worlds
Alanna sweats through weapons drills and dodges a cruel rival long before she earns her shield, the same grind that runs through Fire Emblem: Three Houses' military academy, the Ranger's Apprentice books The Siege of Macindaw and Duel at Araluen, and The Black Shield of Falworth's classic tale of a boy fighting his way up from squire to knight.
Princesses and heirs who refuse the role their kingdom expects of them
Alanna wants a sword instead of the veil expected of a highborn girl, and that refusal to play the assigned role echoes through Brave's Merida choosing archery over a suitor, Snow Like Ashes' exiled heir clawing back a throne, The High King's Daughter, and Fireborne and Bloodmarked, where a title is never enough on its own to make someone a leader.