Books:

The Song of the Lioness

Alanna - The First Adventure

In the Hand of the Goddess

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Lioness Rampant

Brief Overview*: This story, all four books, is about the making of a hero. It's also about a very stubborn girl. Alanna of Trebond wants to be a knight of the realm of Tortall, in a time when girls are forbidden to be warriors. Rather than give up her dream, she and her brother--who wants to be a mage, not a knight--switch places. She becomes Alan; Thom becomes a student wizard in the school where she would have learned to be a lady. The quartet is about her struggle to achieve her goals and to master weapons, combat, polite behavior, her magic, her temper, and even her own heart. It is about friendships--with the heir to the throne, the King of Thieves, a wise and kindly knight--and her long struggle against a powerful enemy mage. She sees battle as a squire and as a knight, lives among desert people and tries to rescue an independent princess. Singled out by a goddess, accompanied by a semi-divine cat with firm opinions, somehow she survives her many adventures to become a most unlikely legend.

The Immortals

Wild Magic

Wolf-Speaker

Emperor Mage

The Realms of the Gods

Brief Overview*: All the orphaned Daine wants when she comes to Tortall is a job. What she finds is magic in many forms, an ongoing war with creatures from legends and nightmares, a new home and, eventually, her unknown father. Hired by the Queen's Riders to help with their horses, she learns her knack with animals is a rare magic which helps her to communicate with the animal kingdom. With that discovery she becomes the student--then friend and sometimes protector--of the great mage Numair. He also helps her to develop her second magical skill, the ability to sense the presence of the immortals, fabled creatures who have come to mortal lands after a long imprisonment. All these changes in Daine's life bring her new human friends as well as animal ones: Tortall's rulers, Alanna the Lioness, the heir to the throne of imperial Carthak, a pygmy marmoset, and the badger god. Often she comes into contact--and sometimes conflict--with Stormwings--half human, half steel birds; dragons; spidrens--giant furred spiders with human heads and an appetite for human flesh; griffins; and the clawed, winged horses called hurroks. Daine is kept on the move as she grows into adulthood and her power, coming to terms with her world and her strange, mixed parentage.

Protector of the Small

First Test

Page

Squire

Lady Knight

Brief Overview*:

First Test: This is the tale of Keladry of Mindelan, a girl who wants just one thing: to copy the feat of her hero Alanna the Lioness, and win her knight's shield. She is now old enough to be a page, and the King has decreed that any nobly-born girl with her parents' consent can enter the palace school. Kel has that permission, as well as the warnings of her parents and older brothers that she will not exactly be welcomed in her new life. They are right, but she means to succeed. To stop Kel in her tracks, the training master, Lord Wyldon of Cavall, insists that she be placed on probation. FIRST TEST is the story of Kel's probationary year.

Page: Page details Kel's remaining years as a page. Just because she survived her first year doesn't mean that everyone now loves and accepts her. She has to deal with that, among other things. What other things? you ask. Try a stray dog who doesn't listen when Kel says "No." Try a maidservant who squeaks with dismay every time Kel picks up a weapon. Try a company of bandits that isn't supposed to be there. Try new boys and changes in her own body. And never forget Kel's fear of heights. When Lord Wyldon sends her out to climb trees, walls, and cliffs, is he doing it because he wants to cure her of her fear, or drive her away from the palace?

Squire: Squire describes Kel's next four years. Her new knight-master is as different from Lord Wyldon as a man can be. He introduces Kel to a new way of life, one that's as much fun as it is hard work. He not only allows her to carry and use her Yamani glaive, but he helps her to take her skill at jousting to the next level, one that introduces Tortall's young knights and squires to a formidable new force on the tournament field. She has the care of a very different new foundling, as well as matters of the heart to consider. Kel meets a wide panorama of new faces, including the Yamani princess Shinkokami and her ladies, a very troubled squire, a baby griffin, and a metal creation like nothing she has ever seen before. Old friends and foes appear: Neal of Queenscove, Cleon of Kennan, Owen of Jesslaw, and the puzzling Joren of Stone Mountain. Through it all, Kel never allows herself to forget what awaits her after her night-long vigil in Midwinter of her fourth year as a squire: the Chamber of the Ordeal.

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Circle of Magic

Sandry's Book

Tris' Book

Daja's Book

Briar's Book

Brief Overview*: Set in a different universe from the Lioness and Immortals books, this quartet centers around four unusual young mages. Sandry, a noble whose parents died recently, has power with thread, from spinning and weaving to simple knot-tying. Daja, a Trader, is the only survivor of a shipwreck in which her family drowned. Declared to be bad luck and banned from life with other Traders, she is free to learn to work metals and, through metal, to work magic. Tris, the merchant's daughter, is no orphan, but her family doesn't want her. Briar is a street rat, a thief and convict. Only at the temple city of Winding Circle does he learn that his strange love of growing things is more than a need to garden. Brought together in a house inside the temple city's walls, watched over by the mages Lark, Rosethorn, Frostpine and Niko, the four struggle to be friends, to exercise their magic, and to survive. Each book centers on one of the four, but make no mistake: they are bound tightly together, and the events that affect each of them also strengthen their connections to one another.

Circle Opens

Magic Steps

Street Magic

Brief Overview*: This quartet picks up the lives of Sandry, Briar, Daja and Tris four years after the events of The Circle of Magic quartet. The first book, MAGIC STEPS, is about Sandry. She's living at Duke's Citadel, following the duke's heart attack six weeks before the book opens. Her three friends have left Winding Circle for a time in the company of their teachers, leaving Sandry and Lark on their own. Now Sandry discovers Pasco Acalon, the son and grandson of two cop families (known as "harriers" in Summersea). Pasco's twelve. He knows he would rather dance than do anything else; he also knows that when he is old enough, he is expected to become a harrier like his parents, and sisters, and cousins, and grandparents. . . . What he does not know is what Sandry can see the first time she watches him dance: Pasco has magic, magic that he works by dancing.

Like many people before him, Pasco will learn how easy it is to tell Lady Sandrilene fa Toren "no" when she says in her softly earnest way, "I really must insist." And both of them will learn what magic can do, as ruthless assassins cloaked in unknown power begin to kill off one of Summersea's richest families--adults and children alike.

STREET MAGES is the second book of The Circle Opens, one that revolves around Briar and his first mage-student, a stubborn, wily street girl named Evvy. Briar meets her in Chammur, a city far to the west of Emelan, a stop on his and Rosethorn's journey east. Briar's cruising one of the city's biggest markets when he sees a girl polishing stones and crystals, causing magic that's in them to flare. She runs when Briar asks her how she does it. When Briar tells Rosethorn, he discovers an unpleasant fact of mage life: unless he can find another stone mage to teach Evvy, he must instruct her in the basics. Of course, to teach her or introduce her to the only stone mage in Chammur, Briar first must catch her. Evvy, a former slave and veteran street kid, knows Chammur and its secrets very well.

Soon Evvy and Briar are at odds with a local street gang, one which has been adopted by a noblewoman who wants her gang to be the most important in the city. To that end the Lady will scheme for them, give them weapons, and exert herself to get control of Evvy--as a stone mage the girl will be able to find hidden gems in houses the gang means to rob. In dealing with her, the gang itself, and Chammur's other stone mage, Briar is forced to review what he wants from life, and how he wants himself, and his exasperating new student, to live.

* These overviews are written by Tamora Pierce and can also be found on her homepage.

Opinions: I don't know how I could have grown up properly if I had not had these books when I was going through my my painful "middle school" years. If I could reccomend any series for young readers it would be Tammy's Alanna books. These are the perfect books about growing up and Ms. Pierce presents stories with perfect insight into the life of a teen. Her Realms of the Gods series is good as well (mmm, Numair is so nummy). I have to admit that I don't like her Circle of Magic and Circle Open series as much as her Tortall series, but that is because her Circle series were written for a younger audience and by the time they were published I was a lot older. Overall, though, she is a fantastic writer for young adults who like fantasy.

Websites:

(These are just some of the -many- sites out there that are pretty good)

Tamora Pierce's Homepage <---self-explanatory (yeah!)

Steelsings

This is a great site for fanfic, book recs, finding other Pierce fans and for Tamora Pierce in general. It does have a rp which I advise you to take caution when joining because the people there can be quite cruel and it is simply not a good situation. But alas, that is a whole long story that I can tell you all about (since I used to be a main part of it) if you wish to hear it.

The Official Tamora Pierce Roleplaying Club

Tara's Tamora Pierce Page

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