Daja’s Book is the third in Tamora Pierce’s children’s fantasy book series, Circle of Magic. I was previously classifying this as young adult, but this book has firmly set my mind on the subject. At the end of these books, I keep wanting more from them. More development. More sophistication. More actual content (they’re very short). More time spent (they take place over very short periods of time). And I finally decided, basically just about five minutes ago, that the expectations I was placing on this series are not ones it’s designed to meet. Tammy’s other books (in Tortall with Alanna and company) are what I’m used to from her, and have much more complexity, length, etc. These are skewed younger, so I have to remind myself to evaluate them on that level.
And on that level, they are really freaking fantastic.
This time around it’s Daja’s turn to have a feature story, and it’s a pretty great one. The kids’ magics are even more tied up with each other than in the last book, to the point where it’s endangering them. So they have to sort that out. Also, they’re out touring the countryside with their teachers, who are helping maintain local communities beset with drought and fires. In the midst of this, Daja accidentally creates a living plant made out of iron, and attracts the attention of her former people, the Traders, who had banished her and named her persona non grata (essentially). So she’s also got to deal with her heritage and the prejudicial nature of her home culture. As always, Tammy books do a deft job exploring power dynamics between genders, cultures, classes, all that stuff. But she does it subtly and with cool magic and characters you can love.
If I ever have kids, this is a series I will definitely be giving them, although I do hope that in future installments of the Emelan world that the kids are a bit more grown up, and the books reflect that.
The first Circle quartet are def kids books, but everything else else falls in the realm of YA (with the possible exception of Melting Stones, but that’s six books away, so whatever).
Also, if you are not aware of Mark Reads, well, then you are missing out on a vast amount of adorable and that is sad. Basically Mark posts YouTube videos of him reading one chapter of a book at a time and then writes up in depth reviews of each chapter. People who have already read the books then laugh at him in comments because his unpreparedness is ridiculously charming. The people commenting are not always as…critically engaged as I would like (some of them call Tammy (who comments occasionally on the reviews) Queen Tammy) but by and large are a lovely group and there are some very interesting discussions of the books going on.
Oh, I’ve been reading Mark Reads/Watches for at least five years now. I jumped on board when he started reading Sorcerer’s Stone. Love that guy! (Good to know about the YA-ness. Looking forward to the rest of the books.)
Ha, I love how small the internet is sometimes. *waves* Hello fellow Mark Reads-er!
Hello! I don’t post very often over there. It’s too intimidating. I’m more of a Pajiba/CBR kind of gal. Who are you over there? My username is the same (although I think IntenseDebate just shows me as ‘Ashley’).
I’m Amanda on there too. I’m Amanda everywhere! I post fairly frequently on the Tammy posts but much less so on the other Reads/Watches stuff since I don’t have the time very often, boo.
I love that you’re reviewing Tammy’s books! These are classified as “intermediate readers” aka ages 9-12, but I still find them great. Maybe I’ll review one of hers this year and post the picture of how many of her books I own… There are many, many repeats!
Ha, that sounds like me with Harry Potter. The other day I counted the number of copies that I own of the first book alone, and let’s just say it’s more than the number of books in the series.