Just when I had nothing to read...the fourth grade gave me an $80 gift certificate to Santoro's Books! Have I mentioned that I love my school. So I promptly bought Bloodhound, by Tamora Pierce...the highly anticipated sequel to Terrier...which if you haven't read it and you are interested in being transported to ancient Tortall for some good mystery and crime solving, you should totally get it. I am a big Pierce fan, having read The Lioness Quartet and it's companion books Trickster's Choice, Trickster's Queen, the Wild Mage Series and the Keladry books.
Pierce is most known for her female protagonists. She writes about girls and women who are unconventional, ambitious, and adventurous. Her heroines are knights, spies, and mages (people with magical gifts) and they are always up to something interesting. The friend of mine who first introduced me to Pierce loved the series on knights, but wasn't into magic and kind of down played the Wild Mage and the Circle of Magic series, saying they weren't as interesting as the rest. But since I had the gift certificate and knew I'd want to read more Pierce after Bloodhound, I took a chance and bought all 9 books of the Circle of Magic series...there are actually two series (4 books each)...The Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens and a fat culminating book titled The Will of Empress. Well Jez, you were wrong, those books were really good.
The story begins with four ambient mages discovering their powers. There are regular or academic mages whose gift is stored within them, and ambient mages whose gift is rooted in something in the surrounding world like Tris, whose magic is in the weather. She doesn't create rain or lightning, but she can draw it and use it. Then there is Briar who has plant magic, Sandry, who has thread magic, and Daja who has metal magic. Ambient mages are so rare and their powers work so differently, none of them know they're mages right away. Mage testers looked for power within them and didn't see it, but through a series of events, Tris, Daja, Briar, and Sandry, four orphans with intense stories of their own, come into contact with the great mages at Winding Circle who take them in and teach them how to handle their magic. The four of them become like family and learn to master their magic. There are adventures, travels, fights, and mysteries. I found the whole series totally entertaining.
But what captured me the most was the idea of everyday magic. Sandry, the thread mage or stitch witch, is a high born nobel and as such isn't allowed to learn to weave (it's seen as to common). When she is finally taken in for mage training and begins to learn her craft, she is able to do amazing things with only thread and needle. I began (I am such a nerd!) to really identify with her. No, I can't sew very well, in fact, every button I've ever sewn has fallen off, but I can do art and I can edit. I can communicate with people even when I don't know the right words or if we don't share a language. There's magic to that right?
While reading these books, I began to see all the every day gifts of my friends and family as a real life form of ambient magic. For example, Mz. Blu, my roomate and friend, is the person in my life most likely to know how to fix something. She can do anything from dry wall to hanging curtains. She taught me how to string wire on the back of canvases and to reverse the direction on my ceiling fan. She could have her own TV show...but more than being able to do something, it's that she does it so effortlessly. I could spend 6 hours trying to fix my bike, but if she messes with it for 5 minutes, it's fixed and ready to go. And Coco has girlie magic. She can take a $5 sun dress from Target and rock it like she's on the catwalk in Milan. She is truly and artist between the make-up and the jewelry and those gorgeous intense high heel shoes. So what kind of mage are you?
Thanks Ms. Pierce. I love your books. They always give me so much to think about.
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