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. 

Briar's Book

 

The last book in The Circle of Magic was pretty good and rather relevant with today's pandemic and disease controls. 

Briar was once a street rat before he became a mage. But now that he has a handle on his magic, he helps his teacher Rosethorn with making medicine and delivering it to the nearby cities. Once he gets into town he goes to see the other street rats and a bit of his old life. But when he gets into town this time he is led to his friend Flick who has all these blue welts all over her body. He calls down Rosethorn who informs him they have a pandemic on their hands. They are quarantined along with Flick and as the days go on more and more people show up at the hospitals with these blue pox. People are dying with fevers so high that they start hallucinating. Riots happen in the streets while they are inside. Mages and healers are working on finding a cure, but the dead are mounting. 

This book is different than the others. Whereas in the other books, the kids really work together with their magics interwoven, here they are still working together, but still separately. Briar spends so much time away from the girls and works a lot more with Rosethorn (which isn't bad, I really enjoyed their relationship growth). But their communication and conversation is so little and they all seem so busy with other things, there is just a different feel of it. And I'm not so sure I like it. 

I liked how Tamora uses modern medicine in a magical way. Gloves and masks alongside magic and enchantments. Though even with all there magics there are causalities. Which is sad. 

I do feel like so much of the other characters were there doing things because "they have to do something" like Daja making boxes, Tris writing for Crane, and Sandry magicing gloves and masks... As if Tamora was grasping at straws for something for them to do. Almost half thought out or something. I wanted more and for them all to work together again more than just what they did at the end. The ending was supposed to be grand, but I think it fell flat. 

I still really like the idea and potential the next series. But for this own series, I feel let down. So I would need to go on to the next series. So on we go. 

Daja's Book

 Book number 3 in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series is probably my favorite so far. 

Daja has been living with her friends at Winding Circle Temple for about four months now. After the death of her family and company of Traders died at sea, she was found by Niko and brought to the temple to learn how to use her magic. After an earthquake and the accident that bound her and her friends' magics together, strange things have been happening. Suddenly Daja who works with fire magics in her forge suddenly has iron growing like a plant; Briar magic with plants shot lightening into sand, frying the plants he was looking after, and made glass; and strange things have been happening to Tris and Sandry's magics as well. Not only can they talk to one another, but they also find that each others powers are leaking unexpectedly into their friends. They need to straighten their magics out and gain control as well as help the  mountain village they've entered that's been struggling greatly with drought and wild fires and a group of Traders are in town reminding Daja of her old life but can't be a part of it because she is a trangshi (unlucky) and therefore an outcast of the Traders and in a way doesn't exist to them anymore. 

This one has been my favorite book so far. It wasn't one I read before when I tried the Circle of Magic series before, but I've found I really enjoyed it. Daja does grow more with her magic and as a character I think  more so than any of there other characters throughout the series so far. Being a trangshi, an outcast, she must learn to cope with this as she still yearns to be accepted by them though the Traders refuse. I like Daja's trades with the caravan and how it makes her questions harder the traditions of her people--along with the rest of the Trader caravan's ideas on tradition too. Instead of just going along with the people, understanding why those cultural traditions are good or bad and if they need to be changed--though change doesn't happen quickly. 

I also like the background plot of the wild fires as well as the mountain city's mage vs Niko and other non-acidemia mages. It was an interesting critic and view on how some feel over shadowed by the "every day magics." I find it interesting because the "every day magic" is what Tamora based all of the kids' magic on: weaving, plants, smithing, and lightening/winds/whatever Tris' is. Yurrun Firetamer tries to show off and is prideful of what he and his father before him were able to do in keeping all the fires of the surrounding villages doused for years. His rivalry with Niko and distain for the students along with his lack of availability for criticism becomes his downfall in the end which causes things to go array. 

All of the books so far have a feeling of "when we have time, remind me to teach you how to do this." Frostpine even says it plainly toward the end of the book, but I think each of the teachers have said it or a variation of it in each book throughout the series. These kids are doing much larger magic than anyone thought they would and these teachers haven't had the time enough to actually be able to sit down and teach their students much it seems. They have only been there four  months, and the kids have to be led or saved a lot by their teachers because they get in too deep into something, though they have ended up saving the day eventually each time. 

I'm looking forward to the next book. Audiobook at the moment with Tamora Pierce actually narrating the book, which makes it rather enjoyable. 

Tris's Book

 The second book in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series is verse pirates. 

Sandry, Tris, Briar, and Daja, after surviving an earthquakes weeks ago have discovered that their magics have weaved themselves with one another. they can now talk to each other in their minds and do more powerful spells. None of them has much control to their powers, but they are slowly studying  and trying to discover it. After the earthquake, some of the physical and magical barriers that kept their Temple home and the surrounding villages safe are in disrepair or in shambles all together, which makes it perfect time for pirates to try to make their way in and plunder the surrounding areas. These aren't normal pirates either. They have more mages and new technology that none of the Temple mages have seen before. These four may only be kids, but they are growing fast and their magics are growing faster. 

I enjoyed this one. It was high action and adventure with those subtle moments of teaching of the kids. Like Sandry's Book it seemed to go by very quickly where it probably would have been okay to join it with the first book in the series, but there was enough of a plot and story arch to make it okay at standing on it's own as part of the series. I suppose I just want more than these, seemingly, brief snippets that we get from the pages of this book. 

I've liked the growth that these characters are going through and how they are becoming their own people while still joining together to go great things. I like how they are willing to bend some of the adult rules as they try to help with these major problems that are affecting everyone. 

I am also very much ready for the next book. Bring it on. 

Sandry's Book

I very much enjoy Tamora Pierce's books. I have read many over the years and her books were one of the very large reasons I got into reading the first place.

I had read Sandry's Book a long time ago and actually didn't get very far into the Circle of Magic series. So I figured I'd give the short audiobook read BY TAMORA PIERCE along with a full cast of other readers for the different characters. I figured this would be pretty awesome. 

The story is about these four very different, social reject kids. A street rat, a traitor, a dejected noble, and a magnet for trouble. With the help and foresight of a Mage named Niko finds them and brings these strange children to a place of learning called the Winding Circle Temple. They find out that they have their own varied types of magic that can cause trouble as well as help, if they can learn to control it. 

It is a very short story. As it is seen through the eyes of four young teens it can take a while for the story to actually progress. The plot is very, very simple and but sets it up for later books in the series. This is a heavily character driven book. Most of it was their backstories and finding out that they are mages then super basics of control. 

One of the big things that is different from other fantasy series (though this is an one of the first YA fantasy books as far as I know) is the variety and cultural differences. The characters are all from different cultures and have different magics and then then them learning to help each other. 

I think this would have been better if she had compiled the books into a longer one with different "parts" separating these books. But I feel the same way about her Song of the Lioness series. They are almost too short to get into deeply without binging through all four books at one time. But they are "older" books when the YA market was "young" so I guess we let it slide. 

I'll be listening to the rest of the books eventually and hopefully enjoying them. I did really enjoy Tamora Pierce actually reading the narrator bits throughout the story. I didn't actually think it was her though because she sounded so young, but it really is here--probably done year ago too. 

So I'll read on, and hopefully there will be more a story and deeper plot than this present one.