Review of First Lessons

Rimsha Falak · Post by **Rimsha Falak** » 13 Aug 2021, 08:10

[Following is a volunteer review of "First Lessons" by Lina J. Potter.]

4 out of 4 stars

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First Lessons is the first book in A Medieval Tale series by Lina J. Potter, translated into English by Elizabeth Adams. It is a work of historical fiction with a hint of fantasy. Aliya is in her fifth year in medical school, when she has an accident and wakes up in the body of Countess Lilian, in a different world with all the trappings of the Middle Ages. Here, women are only one step above animals, hygiene is severely lacking, and pirates and slave-traders abound. While at first Aliya finds this drastic change from modern to medieval to be overwhelming, her strict upbringing as the child of an army officer and a nurse doesn’t allow her to languish for long in her dejection. Soon, she decides to take the metaphoric bull by its horns and try to understand this new world. Understanding the world leads her to wanting to change it for the better for herself and for all the people she soon grows close to and takes under her wings. At its heart, First Lessons is about a modern woman exercising her agency in medieval times, while facing numerous obstacles – patriarchal conventions, religion, courtly intrigue – and using the knowledge she acquired in the modern world to shape her new reality to her advantage.

It would be an understatement to say that I liked this book. With Game of Thrones-esque courtly machinations and a strong female protagonist, it was, in fact, hard to find things I did not like. The plot seems to be fairly straightforward, a modern woman who seems to have time travelled into the body of an overweight Countess, trying to find her way in the medieval world; however, the intricacies lie in the way Aliya and her struggles are portrayed. One of the things I liked the most in the book was how three-dimensional Aliya was, and how she accomplished everything through hard work, and tenacity. She used her knowledge of medicine, herbs, and chemistry that she had acquired in her previous life to make her present life better. She worked hard to build a network of contacts, employed her cunning and her wit to get out of tricky situations, and worked her way into laying the foundation of the business empire that she intended to run in this world. Each personal victory of Aliya, against the patriarchal society of the medieval times, felt personal. Each time she thwarted someone who had wronged her made me, the reader, relish in her victory. Aliya is Machiavellian in her machinations, she trusts no one and relies only on her wits to advance in this new world. It was particularly interesting to note how her morality slowly changes the longer she is in this new world. In the beginning, Aliya views herself and Lilian as separate entities, but slowly their consciousness blends into one, with Aliya calling herself as Lilian more and more. Another thing I liked a lot was the fact that as Aliya “invented” technologies, she made sure that they were sustainable.

The only problem I had with the book was that there were too many characters and after a point of time it became a little difficult to keep track of them. However, this does not distract from the reading experience at all.

I would like to rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. I could not find any grammatical errors, and I believe that the book has been edited professionally and extremely well.

I recommend this book to those readers who like time travel novels set in medieval times, with a strong female protagonist. While there was no explicit language or situation, I still believe that the topics touched upon, like adultery and miscarriage, make it more suitable for a more mature audience.

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First Lessons
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