Book #199 of 2018: Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #2) Tamora Pierce is always hit-or-miss for me, and this particular Tortall novel is unfortunately more of a miss. The spycraft feels mostly like a repeat of the last book, the plot points are easy to predict, and the author ultimately does …
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Book #171 of 2018: Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #1) At this point in her wider Tortall series, author Tamora Pierce can easily spin a great story… when she can manage to get out of the way of her own worst impulses. And for the most part here, she does. This …
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Book #91 of 2018: Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #4) A solid but kind of unremarkable Tortall adventure. The Protector of the Small series is generally marketed as a quartet, but it honestly feels more like a cohesive trilogy followed by this somewhat vestigial afterthought. I’m not trying to be too …
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Book #69 of 2018: Squire by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #3) I’ve noted before that this quartet of books within Tamora Pierce’s larger Tortall series seems to be the author’s take on the classic boarding school literary genre, like Harry Potter without any looming Voldemort-style threat. Indeed, the plot is the major shortcoming …
Book #50 of 2018: Page by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #2) I like this book better than the first one, and it definitely has a more engaging climax, but I’m still finding this particular Tortall quartet to be a rather aimless bildungsroman. As likeable as the heroine is, there’s simply not much plot …
Book #15 of 2018: First Test by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #1) This is the start of a new quartet within author Tamora Pierce’s larger Tortall series, and it benefits from the worldbuilding that the earlier books have established without doing much to further things here. Set a decade or so after Pierce’s …
Book #232 of 2017: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #4) This is the final book in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet (within her larger Tortall series), and it sort of resolves the ongoing storyline from the previous books. But most of the novel strands its main characters away from the central …
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Book #178 of 2017: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #3) This third novel in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals quartet is the first one that I’ve felt approached the quality of the other books I’ve read in her wider Tortall series. The main character is still absurdly overpowered – she’s already able to magically communicate …
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Book #82 of 2017: Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #2) An okay follow-up to Tamora Pierce’s earlier novel Wild Magic. I liked that Pierce went out of her way to emphasize that not all creatures who look like monsters are evil, but this was kind of a weird message in a novel where the …
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Book #48 of 2017: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #1) More confident and less problematic than author Tamora Pierce’s earlier work Song of the Lioness, but with its same fun sense of magic and adventure. The Lioness Alanna and her friends return as supporting characters this time, with the main focus given over …
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