Month of Tamora Pierce

I had a bit of reading dry spell during my absence but broke it in early October when one of my co-workers loaded up my desk with 11 Tamora Pierce books. I generally think highly of Jess's taste in YA and since a student saw the books on my desk and got excited, I decided to break through my dry spell. I finished the last of the 11 early this morning.

Over all, I think Pierce writes good fantasy-based YA.What I read fell into three series all set in the same world. While she includes some gritty elements here and there, mostly it falls into a standard girl oriented format.

Beka Cooper Series

1. Terrier
2. Bloodhound
3. Mastiff

This series follows the deeds of Beka Cooper whose highest aspiration is to be a "Dog" or city guard. She was born in slums of Corus and can hear the spirits of the dead who linger on the backs of pigeons. This series, of the three I read, included the most gritty realism. Pierce does a good job describing a medieval city slum. Unlike the rest of the series, each of these books almost read like a thriller/mystery with all the action revolving around Beka's investigations. There is intrigue and betrayal and a talking cat of dubious origins. Good stuff.

Song of the Lioness Series

1. The First Adventure
2. In the Hand of the Goddess
3. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
4. Lioness Rampant

 This series picks up at least 100 years after the Beka Cooper series. In fact, Beka's several times grandson turns up as one of the main secondary characters. In this series, it's been a long time since there were any lady knights, but Alanna Trebond is determined to avoid her fate as pampered noble lady. She disguises herself as a boy and joins page training at the palace. Over the course of the series she becomes a knight and then a hero. She has several love affairs, which are tastefully handled by Pierce. This series features a lot of court intrigue. While Alanna isn't a blundering warrior type, she's not exactly a deep thinker either. It's a solid series, but I wish there were more of the intrigue angle.

Immortals Series

1. Wild Magic
2. Wolf-Speaker
3. Emperor Mage
4. The Realms of the Gods

This is the series I actually started with. It takes place soon after the events described in "Song of the Lioness" and follows a character named Daine who is a young woman with a secret. The resolution of this secret accounts for most of the first novel so I won't say much. Suffice it to say, there is more than one kind of magical ability in this world and Daine has one of the more rare and unusual. All of Pierce's series seem to feature animal companions, but this series is practically infested with them. This series also opens the door for more magical critters which is an interesting expansion.

Update

It's been a long time, at this point, since I've written. Part of it is that I've been busy, but a bigger piece of it is that I've been very unsettled of late. So here's what is happening.

1. I feel a lot of pressure, both internal and external, to figure out what I'm doing with my life, particularly in the sense of furthering my education. I'm stuck in a bit of motivation soup. I like many things about my job, so I'm not sure why it can't 'just be enough.' However, every time I think I've convinced myself of that, I get this anxiety linked up with a sense of moving forward, or not as the case may be. Now, part of that is money, teachers don't get paid much, but it's a livable wage. At my school, any way, moving up to admin wouldn't necessarily be much of an increase in my pay check at all. Moving up to admin would also mean a step away from the kids and one of the things I've known for a while, it's not the teaching I love, it's helping these kids, this demographic. Additionally, I'm not sure I really want to deal with the headaches inherent in being admin. To make it worse, that means going back to school for my M.ed. and trying to balance that with job and life just in order to move into a job that I'm not sure I want. However, if I don't move in that direction, I can't think of any other move that would be worth the risk and anxiety. My ambition towards writing always raises its head at this point, but I'm not a fool enough to think that is anything but a pleasant dream. Even if I could get my writing habit back and find the time, there's little likelihood that I could make any money at it. So, there I'm stuck on that issue.

2. I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about Thomas's daycare. Not to get into it too deeply, I just don't trust them to give me the information that I need to make plans. They've already held him back into the 2/3 room on the basis of potty issues. They sprang that on us even though I expressed concerns many times over the previous year and even made plans over the summer on the basis that they were working on it with him, only find out two weeks before the change over that they had not been. They had many opportunities to talk to us about it and didn't. In fact they handled it very poorly when I expressed frustration. So the longer he lingers in the this room, the longer I worry that we are facing a similar experience when he needs move into pre-K. He's making progress on the potty front, but I have no idea what their standard for moving him into the 3/4 room is and don't feel like I can talk to them about it based on how they responded to the previous issue. Everyone I've tried to ask has been absurdly vague. I don't want to move him to a new daycare while he is making progress with the potty but I also don't want him missing the intellectual stimulation he needs. I feel like there's no good choice.

So, that's mostly what's going on. I have so much of this stuff whirling around, that I'm having a hard time coming up with public writing for the blog. However, I suspect that's actually making the anxiety worse, so I'm going to try to get the blog going again.

Sorry to natter on.