Street Magic

 The second book in the Circle Opens series by Tamora Pierce follows Briar and his teacher Rosethorn into Chammur where they work their Green Magic to help revitalize the "tired" ground. Chammur is a place that has had people living on it for centuries that is built into the rock that surrounds it. It's more than just the farm soil that's tired. 

While traveling through the market, Briar spots a girl shining stones and embowing them with magic. When he asks her about it, she runs. He tries to find her over the next few days while familiarizing himself with the local gangs. Being once part of a gang, he gets rolled into their problems. Between finding Evvy, finding her a teacher, teaching her the basics of stone magic and how to meditate, and the gang wars that surround him, he has his hands full. 

I really enjoyed this book. The differences and difficulties of walking into different cultures is an interesting path Briar leads. 

I enjoyed the simplicity of the text while having a set of complicated characters. The stone mage, Evvy, reminded me a lot of Toph Beifong from Avatar: the Last Air Bender. Both "stone mages" that are hard, firm, and determined. The characters all throughout the series were great, though there seemed to be a lot of them that only got mentioned a very few times, yet still important, but then were quickly gone after a little while (for very good reasons, mind). Many flowed in and out of the story--sometimes making it hard to remember who they were exactly.

I've gotten to really love Briar and his companions (new ones included) and I think that is a signature of Tamora Pierce. She puts so much life and vigor into her characters that they come alive and I want more and more of them.  

This book was also an audiobook that I listened to and it was very well done. I had now qualms with any of them and enjoyed their performances immensely. 

I'll have to get to the 3rd book later because it isn't available at my library currently, but I will get to reading it sooner rather than later. 

Magic Steps

Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce is the first book in The Circle Opens series, which is also the sequel series to The Circle of Magic. 
 

The four children, now middling teenagers, have now gone their separate ways with their teachers. Tris and Niko, Daja and Frostpine, Briar and Rosethorn have all left Winding Circle temple to go see the world and learn more about their magics leaving Sandry and Lark at home. Sandry goes to look after her uncle who had a heart attack and doesn't know the meaning of rest. After a bit of recovery and a small horse ride, they spy a boy performing magic by dancing. Pasco has a family of Herriers, the city guards, and his family thinks his dancing is a useless waste of time because none of them knew it was magic. Now that Sandry has found this boy who needs to be taught and none of the teachers at Winding Circle know Dance Magic, she has now become Pasco's teacher. To compound her troubles, there has been murder in the city by invisible hands that are using an almost unheard of type of magic-- Unmagic. Magic the devours magic like a whirlpool sinking boats. 

This was well written and had a very good plot to it. It was well plotted out and was easy to follow along without getting to tangled with new evidences and procedures that were given to us. 

Pasco irked me at the beginning for being a lazy teenage boy with all the excuses and trying intentionally to make things hard for Sandry--though this has my own heavy biases and is probably actually okay. Sandry's arch in becoming a teacher though unwanted at the beginning was well done and made for an interesting background alongside the murders in the city. The mystery of the murders and Unmagic was engaging as well and kept me wanting to come back for more. 

The audiobook was also read by Tammy and a whole cast of voice actors who did a pretty good job for the most part. There was one actor, though, who was very obnoxious because he sounded robotic--thankfully he only had a few lines though. 

I enjoyed this book. It reminded me very much of Daja's Book in that the plot and characters were gold. It was, again, very well done. 

I can't wait to get onto the next one.