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. 

Third Girl

The only other Agatha Christie book I've read was And Then There Were None, which was fantastic and I've recently dived into most of the BBC from 1989-2013 tv series and loved it very much. So, here we are at trying the novels. 

 

This novel is about a girl who comes to Hercule Poirot's office and says that she thinks she's killed someone, but then before any real investigation can happen she vanishes. Who is she, who's been murdered, and why did it happen? With the help of a mystery writer friend who is a notorious socialite, he finds out that she is the daughter of a rich man who's just returned from Africa with his new wife and that Nora, the young woman, is living as a "third girl" at a small flat in London to help with boarding expensive. But for as far as Poirot can figure, no murder has occurred that is connected to young Nora. 

This book wasn't particularly my favorite, though I don't have much to compare it too. The mystery was good and I enjoy Poirot as a character, but I do feel there were some problems. 

The reader of this audiobook was awesome, which is why I give it a generous 4 stars, because Hugh Fraser is the Hercule Poirot's friend and sometimes assistant in the BBC Tv series, Captain Hastings. It was a treat to listen to him voice the narrations and Poirot himself. 

I think I struggled with this one because it seemed so redundant. Different characters repeated so  much of the same things about Nora or her father or other situations that it kind of bogged me down. If I was reading it myself I probably would have put it down or had a far harder time getting through it. I don't know if this is the case of other of Hercule Poirot books or others of her books in general--it sure wasn't the case in And Then There Were None. It made it kind of hard to get through all the information, because it kept being repeated, relentlessly. So in trying to find out for myself what was going on and who was actually murdered, was more difficult than it should have been. 

I will listen to another or two, especially if it is by Hugh Fraser, but it might be some time before that actually happens. 

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. 

The Bad Beginning

The first book in The Series of Unfortunate Events goes to show that sometimes adults who make the system work, make the system not work. 

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire get the tragic news that their parents have died in a fire that destroyed their mansion home. A family friend, Mr. Poe, is executer of the parents estate and must find a home for the three orphans to live at. He chooses to send them to the "closest" relative (as in physically closest who lives across town but the kids have never met) who is a nasty piece of work. Count Olaf is... a nasty piece of work. He makes the kids do ridiculous chores and is an abusive acholic who is scheming to get the Baudelaire fortune. And the saddest thing is that Mr. Poe doesn't believe them because they are kids. 

This series is one of unfortunate events. These kids have a horrific life. And it only gets worse as it goes on. It has been a very long time since I've read this series though, so it's interesting to read it again, with adult eyes to pick up on the things I missed the first time. I find it really interesting too to see the different movie adaptations that have come about as well. This book is very basic where the kids don't understand that their parents were part of a secret organization--which the series gets into in the second book a bit--but the movies bring those moments up fairly quickly. Over the course of the series we get into a lot of hidden things that I know I didn't get in my first (teenage) read though. So it'll be fun to go through all 13 books (and the extras) to pick up what I missed. 

This is a good book for the start of the series. It is simple and straight forward. Olaf really is a bad guy. A nasty dude. Trying to marry Violet for her money, but is also excited for the "wedding night" is just... ick. Poor girl. The way she got out of it I don't think would actually work, but, you know, we really don't want it to happen, so we'll take it. Just get her out of there. The fact that so many marriages happened like this throughout the centuries and millennia sickens me. Poor girls. 

But for this book, Mr. Poe is also one of the worst! Olaf is obviously the bad guy, but come one Poe. He'll be awful and idiotic throughout the series. Sending the kids off to the worst places and not listening to them when the kids come to him with Klaus having handprint  marks on his face. There was his coughing fits where "he couldn't hear them" but he also wasn't trying to hear them or any of their complaints of mistreatment. Because they are kids, their complaints don't mean anything. Very much a commentary of how children are aware of what is going on more than what adults think. If only we would listen. Adults are supposed to help kids, keep them safe, but it never happens for them. Hence, A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

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. 

The Girl in Green

This is a story of two men in search of a girl. In 1999, US forces were in the Middle East during Desert Storm and were in the process of pulling out just as a civil war was breaking out. There were many civilian casualties. Arwood, a pee-on in the US military is supposed to be on the look out for Iraqi forces at Checkpoint Zulu, lets a war reporter named Thomas Benton walk go into the nearby city to go reporting. Non-U.S. military forces bomb the city Benton is in and he tries to run back to the demilitarized zone. On his way back, he tries to help this teenage girl in a green hijab come with him as a refugee to the save US compound. Arwood tries to help and on their way back the girl gets shot in the back. This moment changes their lives. Arwood becomes more reckless and "dishonors"  himself in the military, Benton has a hard time getting over how this girl died. They never even knew her name or really heard her speak. Now, 22 years later, they see television footage of the war-torn Middle East and see this same girl who's been imprinted into their minds for over two decades as a bomb goes off right behind her. How is she alive? Is it really her? And how are they going to save this girl? 

When it comes to Desert Storm and many of there African and Middle Eastern wars, I know very little. I know that there are U.S. Troops there, and that "War is Hell" but as for many other parts of it, I know very little. I was hoping for a little view into the Desert Storm world that I was only a kid living through and didn't understand the news. This book gives a great feeling toward what I was looking for. It sets you right there giving fairly fleshed out characters in this real world time and location. It was written well for the most part which I appreciated. 

Arwood is a fascinating character and Benton is alright. The real situations were eye opening as well. 

I was prepared for the war moments, the sad and scary times, but the vulgarity (which I gave a few more passes to because "soldiers be soldiers) got to be more than what I care for as well as the more than prevalent "boinking" going on. The "curtains closed" on many sex scenes, but I stopped when Arwood was discussing things. I hit final straws and there was enough hopping on my drawn line that I just set it down. 

I didn't finish it. Some might want to, but I'm setting it down and will probably have to do my own research into what happened instead of hoping for "entertainment" to do it for me.