#magic steps

[finaart14]

in my feverish Tamora Pierce re-read I just got to the circle opens and I have a thought: bisexual Duke Vedris.

He loved his wife, and now he is in a committed relationship with Baron Erdogun I don't make the rules!

[hedgehogreads]

Men and women left the boats to stand along the edges of the spread net, the lantern light rippling over their faces. They looked grim and forbidding, like statues of stern old gods.

“Two months ‘thout enough fish to cover the deck,” one of them muttered. “This better work.”

Pasco’s store of courage, never large, shrank even more as he looked at their faces. I’m dead, he thought weakly. I just ain’t bothered to lie down yet.

 - Magic Steps, Tamora Pierce

[franticvampirereads]

It’s probably been more than a decade since the last time I read this book. The waves of nostalgia that crashed through my mind while I was read were incredible. And somehow, even though I had forgotten so much about this book, it still manages to be one of the best fantasy books I’ve read! There really is a reason why Tamora Pierce is one of my favorite authors.

I loved that we got to see Sandry growing into her magic more! She was kind of a badass in this, she jumped feet first into a magical murder mystery and she started teaching a younger mage how to safely harness their powers. It was just such a fun adventure through the whole book. This is getting four and a half stars!

Reading Challenge Prompt Fills:

Alphabet Challenge: M

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Circle Opens Quartet

There is something deep and rich about the Circle Universe that the Circle of Magic quartet illuminated but kind of didn't have space to fully explicate. That's why I am fully and forever grateful that Tamora Pierce followed up Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris on their adventures with their teachers after they're granted their mage credentials. Let's talk the Circle Opens quartet.

While the Circle of Magic books focus on the four protagonists as a quartet in each book (even if the plot might center on a single protagonist), the Circle Opens books see our protagonists hundreds of miles apart and truly having to stand on their own feet and grow their own strengths. They also all get their own students in these books, and seeing how their personalities, teachers, and backgrounds affect how they interact with their students makes these books very, very fun. It also makes these books feel more like true YA than advanced middle grade (which is kind of how the Circle of Magic books read, but that's not a criticism; those books are amazing).

Magic Steps finds Sandry in Emelan caring for Duke Vedris after a stroke and basically low-key running the country while her uncle recovers. On a morning ride, she stumbles across Pasco Acalon as he dances a luck spell for a friend's family of fisherfolk. After some...creative convincing...Pasco agrees that yes, he has magic and needs training. This is where Sandry learns about the condition of her new credentials: If she discovers a new mage, and a teacher with a complementary power set cannot be found, the discovering mage is ethically and legally bound to teach the new mage at least the basics.

As though teaching a reluctant 12-year-old with family baggage and a formerly unknown type of magic wasn't enough, Sandry also has to deal with a blood feud that followed a merchant family to Emelan and has turned ugly. An unmagic mage is helping two assassins commit murder, and in the process is contaminating the city with unmagic.

Unmagic is a super cool concept, because it is the absence of everything and it consumes everything it touches, especially magic. It is horrifying in that it simply is; it's not evil in and of itself but it consumes with no care or compassion, and so in practice, it tends to look evil in an implacable, inevitable sort of way. There was a sense of existential horror to the magic itself that is unusual in Tamora Pierce's work, but was highly effective when pitted against Sandry's radical hope and optimism.

Ultimately, Sandry and Pasco work together to get Pasco's magic under control and bring peace back to the streets of Emelan.

Street Magic finds Briar and Rosethorn in the great, ancient city of Chammur, working with the local Living Circle Temple and beginning Briar's side hustle as a shakkan shaper and merchant. Chammur also brings Briar's past slamming into his present, since the city has a strong gang presence--so strong that they are practically their own political and social force.

This becomes more complicated when Briar discovers that Evvy--a street rat who makes a few coins by polishing stones for souk merchants--is, in fact, a stone mage. When Chammur's official stone mage is revealed to be the world's biggest douchecanoe and Evvy--quite rightly--refuses to have anything to do with him, Briar takes her under his tutelage.

Honestly, the best parts of this book are Briar's relationships with Evvy and Rosethorn. Evvy pokes all kinds of holes in Briar's past worldview and how he sees gangs' function in society. She's also delightful on her own merits, whip smart, and a devoted cat mom.

Briar and Rosethorn's relationship is delightlfully complicated and simultaneously dead simple. After her death in Briar's Book, Rosethorn is a bit physically delicate, and Briar has quietly taken on the role of surrogate son and caretaker, even as Rosethorn is his surrogate mother and teacher. The two of them have complimentary rough edges, and as Rosethorn herself says, they've come so far beyond who owes what to who, and simply are each other's. I love these two.

Cold Fire locates Daja and Frostpine in Namorn in the dead of winter, as Frostpine continues on his quest to expose Daja to as many smiths and craftspeople as possible, broadening her already deep education. While visiting an old friend and his family, Daja discovers that their twin children are mages. Now unlike Sandry and Briar, Daja is able to find mage teachers for her young students, but neither teacher has the time or space to do the basics--so that falls to Daja to teach.

In addition to her very energetic students, Daja is wrapped up in the Kugisko community, including local firefighter Bennat Ladradun. Daja expands her already prodigious skillset to include walking through burning buildings to rescue those trapped inside. She unfortunately has to do this rather a lot, because Kugisko has a firebug.

Ultimately, Daja's story in Namorn is about compassion, patience, and learning to see things as they are, not as she might wish them to be.

Shatterglass shows us Tris and Niko at a magical conference in Tharios, right in the middle of the reign of a Jack the Ripper-esque criminal who is attacking and murdering Yaskedasi--female street dancers. In the midst of academia and murder, Tris finds herself two students: Keth Warder, a journeyman glassblower recovering from a lightning strike, and Glaki, the orphaned daughter of a murdered Yaskedasi Keth was friends with.

Poor Tris never plays life on easy mode. While she isn't the only one of the four mages to take two students, she is the only one with students with such diverse needs. Keth is a grown-ass adult who had training and a career before a lightning strike awakened his ambient magic, whereas Glaki is like four years old and an academic mage. And yet, somehow Tris manages. She looks after both her students and helps the police catch their murderer.

Overall, this quartet is a phenomenal follow up to the Circle of Magic quartet, and I love how the world expands beyond Emelan here. I also love that the tables turn and our students become first-time teachers themselves. If you are any sort of Tamora Pierce fan, I cannot recommend the Circle Universe enough.

[fiction-quotes]

Inspecting his stark white shirt, black tunic, and breeches, Sandry decided she would have to do something about the duke's clothes. He liked to dress plainly, but there was no law that said the had to wear blacks, browns, and dark blues without any bright colors. A crimson tunic might warm his skin tone, and a touch of gold embroidery at his collar would add sparkle to his eyes. Until he was fully recovered from his recent heart attack, he would need such aids to keep his people from thinking he might die.

And it won't hurt to stitch in signs for health and strength, either, she thought, fingers already itching to pick up needle and thread. “Uncle,” she announced crisply, “just because the healers say you may ride again does not mean you are ready to take up your old work schedule as well.”

  —  Magic Steps (Tamora Pierce)

[wideeyedreader]

Recently Read: Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce

Five stars! I want to live in this world.

[creepymoonbeam]

Tamora Pierce is one of the few authors who has a talent for continuing a series with the same characters after a huge time gap.