Wednesday Reading

[chomiji]

Well, it's been a while. I have been reading like crazy, but I doubt I can remember all I've been reading off the top of my head. Here's what I can recall at the moment:

For whatever reason, I have never previously read anything by Tamora Pierce. Recently, Big South American River had all three volumes of the Beka Cooper series on sale as ebooks for a pittance, so I bought them. And after a re-read for a writing project, I read them. And read them. Until I finished the whole thing.

Rebakah (Beka) Cooper is a child of the slums, but she, her siblings, and her mother come under the protection of a powerful nobleman and are taken into his household. The mother dies, and the children are trained in jobs that befit their station: the boys as couriers, the girls as maids ... except that Beka wants to be a Dog, one of the constables that their patron commands. She has a natural aptitude for it, as well as some supernatural powers that come in handy on the job (mages of various kinds are not uncommon in this world). The series opens as Beka as become a Puppy: a Dog trainee. It follows her as she becomes a full Dog and then one of the most skilled in her city's company.

It's very absorbing reading, vivid and enjoyable. I had a very strange feeling about the first two books versus the third, though. It was as though Pierce had conceived of and possibly even written the third book first, and then went back and wrote the first two. The first two are written as though they are the diary of teenaged Beka, and they work pretty well in that way. The third, where the stakes are much higher and where Beka and her team are crossing miles and miles of countryside, gets less plausible as a diary and also somewhat less engaging for me. There's also a plot twist that I'm not sure I buy as in-character for the person involved.

Is anyone here a Pierce fan? Which of her other books would you recommend?

I've also picked up the most recent volumes of the manga Black Butler (vol. 26) and The Ancient Magus Bride (vol. 9). When they arrived, I discovered that I had completely lost the plot of both series, and the previous volumes were lost somewhere in the house. The Mr. finally tracked them down for me.

Black Butler takes a serious turn after the arc about the mysterious doings in the popular music hall, in which we saw Victorian "boy bands" captivating the crowds (anachronisms mean nothing to mangaka Yana Toboso) as a front for far more sinister activities. Ceil discovers something momentous about his past... although this being Black Butler, I'm not sure of the truth of what he has discovered.

The Ancient Magus Bride covers the final part of the arc in which Chise has suffered grave effects after preventing a frightened young dragon from laying waste to London. She, Elias, and some fairy allies also put their main adversary to rest, at least for the time being. This is apparently not the end of the series, but a new major story arc seems to be next.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I really love some of Tamora Pierce's books and some I'm very meh on; I also tend to like the earlier books in any given series better than the last one, though the Beka books were particularly that way. My favorites:

Protector of the Small: Pierce's first series is about Alanna, who has purple eyes and magic talents and trains at knight disguised as a boy. This series is about the second girl to go to knight school (not disguised as a boy), one generation later. It's a more realistic take on the same idea, with a very likable heroine whose main power is extreme stubbornness.

The Magic Circle and the sequel series, The Circle Opens. I like the first four books (these two quartets); there are later ones that didn't really work for me though I did appreciate explicitly queer characters. It's about four misfit kids who nobody wants, and who have unusual magic powers; they get taken in and taught magic. It's full of found family feels and cool magic details and is great. The second series has them mostly split up, taking on apprentices of their own, and solving murder mysteries.

[the_rck]

I second the recommendation for Protector of the Small. I read it in paper, and my husband listened to the audiobooks which he thought were pretty well done.

Circle of Magic is a faster read. Both quartets of books feature shorter installments than the Tortall books do. The audiobooks of the first quartet that my husband listened to, however, were full cast and not all that well done. The voice actors reading the younger main characters were pretty uniformly robotic while the actors reading the older characters tended not to be.

The books in the series that were published after The Circle Opens don't really make a good set because all they have in common with each other is the world and a few characters. I liked The Melting Stones but will probably never finish Battle Magic. The latter is difficult because it's backstory relative to books published before it and covers events that have previously been established as horrific.

[ezrablue]

I third the recommendation of The Magic Circle and its sequel series! They're delightful, if quick reads. I've also heard that the Song of the Lioness series is wonderful.

I'm also hoping to catch up on Black Butler myself, so I'm eager to hear I've got good stuff coming!

[umadoshi]

This is apparently not the end of the series, but a new major story arc seems to be next.

Yes, indeed! I adapted the first volume of the new arc last month. ^_^