#Sandry

[tucsonhorse]

"what good is magic, if you can't use it to help people?" That right there is a defining phrase in my approach to the world. No wonder Daja's Book has always been my favorite of the series.

[ivorivet]

Book related yarn crimes!!

I will be in a Circle of Magic cosplay group with @pearlybae @knitfreakcosplay and aka.s.mel soon and because I am actively listening to the audiobooks and have no chill about spinning I wanted to make some props for us!

First is Sandry's yarn circle, which is described as being a beginner's first lumpy yarn with four distinct lumps, and also looped back on itself so you can't tell where the beginning is. Drafting huge lumps was a big pain in the butt because the size differential I wanted between the fat and skinny sections of the yarn meant that virtually no twist would get into the lumpy bits. (Could have made them smaller, but I feel like it would have made for a boring prop.) So when I started trying to join the ends of the yarn and even out the spacing between the lumps, the stupid lumps kept drafting out because that's how fiber behaves and the loop kept getting bigger and bigger. To get the loop to hang loosely without plying back on itself, I finger-felted the skinny parts with soap and water and then fried it with a flatiron for good measure.

The other prop is a spindle with some light-up yarn. It's just wool wrapped around some EL wire but I'm pretty pleased at how it turned out. And I got to use up some of the mountain of Icelandic thel wool I have to find something to make with, so win-win!

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Circle is Reforged

Tamora Pierce's Circle Reforged books are an interesting case, because this is really where she started bouncing around in time in Emelan, and filling in some parts of story that were mentioned, suggested, or explicity referenced but not told. The books themselves were published well and truly out of chronological order, but having read them in publication order as they came out and then in chronological order on reread, I honestly don't think there's a "preferable" strategy. If you've read the Circle of Magic and Circle Opens quartets, you can explore the Circle Reforged in whatever order. However, I think I'm going to cover them in (more or less, no promises) publication order here. So let's talk The Will of the Empress.

*absolutely rampant, unapologietic spoilers for the Circle of Magic and Circle Opens quartets below the break*

This book explore the implications and consequences of Lady Sandreline being both Fa Toren in Emelan and Fa Landreg in Namorn. Our girl is practically royalty in two countries, but after she is orphaned in Hatar's smallpox epidemic, Duke Vedris in Emelan and Lord Ambros Fer Landreg in Namorn largely shield Sandry from her responsibilities as the primary landowner of the Landreg estates--which is entirely reasonable given that she is ten years old at the time.

When we get to the beginning of Will of the Empress, though, Sandry has been functionally running Emelan in the wake of Duke Vedris's heart attack and Ambros has been pointedly sending her account books for her Namornese estates. Sandry has been neglecting the hell out of those, and misses the fact that the Empress of Namorn has been financially squeezing Landreg to try to force Sandry back to Namorn.

Sandry has also been largely completed separated from Briar, Tris, and Daja for almost two full years by the opening of this book, since they went off to travel with their teachers and she stayed. She's had contact with Lark, but even that dropped significantly once Sandry moved into the Duke's Citadel.

Given all of that and two years of personal growth and change, when our four protagonists reunite in the house Daja buys for them, they collectively seize up in self-consciousness and shame and uncertainty. Plus seriously powerful ambient magic. Which literally everyone with eyes (except our protagonists) can see is a bad thing. So to kill two birds with one stone, Duke Vedris asks Briar, Tris, and Daja to go with Sandry to Namorn as basically bodyguards. The background hope is that the four of them get to know each other again and find their equilibrium.

With a lot of yelling and a distinct lack of talking, they set off to Namorn.

Which is when we really get off to the races, because the lack of talking means that Briar hasn't told the girls he's dealing with PTSD from the war in Gyongxe; Daja hasn't said she is dealing with abandoment issues, figuring out her own sexuality, and having helped kill a friend who had killed a lot of people by setting fires; Tris hasn't told anyone that she developed a skill that kills or drives mad 99.99% of all mages who try it and the whole Ghost-is-Jack-the-Ripper thing in Tharios; and Sandry...well, I love our girl, but she's dealing with a combination of inheritance and political machinations, her crippling terror of another family member dying on her watch, and the fact that she actively chose to rip three people to shreds to save Pasco's life. So everybody has big feelings and nobody is dealing with them or communicating effectively. Which, again, is a GREAT combination with the phenomenal cosmic powers.

This is a Sandry-centric book, but as we did with Sandry's Book, we also get a metric ton of the other three as well, because as they did in Sandry's Book, they're coming together as a unit. Trying very, very hard to prevent that are Berenene dor Ocmor, Empress of Namorn and her court mages, Ishabal Ladyhammer and Quenaill Sheildsman. They are trying to either recruit or get rid of four legendarily powerful mages. The recruiting goes...poorly. For a variety of reasons. The getting rid of goes WORSE.

Part of the recruiting scheme for Sandry specifically includes a himbo husband that Berenene can boss around to her heart's content. The approved suitors are Jakuben fer Pennun, who had himbo down pat, and Finlach fer Hurich, who was less himbo and more goldigging asshole with an influential uncle. Finlach ends up leaping SO FAR over the line that Berenene has to slap him down so hard that his entire life is ruined.

Then we come to Pershan fer frickin' Roth. Even if you take the Namornese tradition of kidnapping brides into account, Shan takes the whole thing to another level because his ass makes Sandry feel SAFE and WANTED and VALUED AS A PERSON before turning around and kidnapping her in a trap tailor-made for subduing even a very powerful stitch witch. Literally this man is the worst and he deserved so much worse than he got.

Overall, this book is about reconnection and remembering that some bonds are deeper than two-year world tours. It's also about seeing your siblings as their whole selves and accepting them, warts and all, because they are the people you love and who love you back. This is one of my favorite Circle Universe books, and I think it is objectively the best Sandry book and the best "all four of us are here" book in the Circle universe.

This book also objectively heavier than the Circle of Magic and Circle Opens quartets. It's still technically YA, but it's the 16-19 end of YA more than the 13-15 end, given that it deals with not only PTSD and trauma, but also sexual assault and kidnapping, so take care if you aren't in a headspace for those topics. The book will still be there, and taking care of yourself in your book choices comes first, always.

[dr-dendritic-trees]

When we actually see Sandry weave in Circle she's generally using either straight magic or a backstrap loom, which is a very flexible, but also very simple loom, in terms of number of moving parts.

But its very important to me that Sandry actually be able to use all looms. Like, she has backstrap looms and weaving tablets for small pieces/complex patterns/travel but also, like, big 16 or 32 shaft jack or dobby looms that she is totally at home with.

She can move between the two effortlessly.

[idreamtiflew]

My Midjourney creations of the four ambient mage siblings from Emelan. I know AI Art is controversial... but it's so fun to mess around on Midjourney, and I would never monetize these...

[found-family-tournament]

Found Family Tournament Round 1 Part 8 Group 38

Propaganda and further pictures under the cut

Circle Kids: Sandry, Tris, Daja, Briar, Lark, Rosethorn, Frostpine, Nico

Submissions are still open!

Nahida & Wanderer:

Angry former villain little guy who would kill for people he loves and kind new goddess who doesn't know how to stick up for herself learn from each other to become more well rounded people and run the country together- Nahida is a large part of Scaramouche's redemption and tries to get him to learn how to fit into society better. She knows the pain of being alone all the time and encourages social interaction despite his insistence that people won't like him anyway. On the other hand, Scaramouche shows her respect as a goddess in every interaction they have, which is not something that Nahida is used to. Even pre-redemption, he only refers to her as a goddess - an equal. They balance each other out in fantastic ways and take care of each other often.

Circle Kids:

Four kids from wildly different backgrounds go through wildly different traumas an end up in the same house learning magic from four very op mages. They don't like each other much to begin with but then they have to save a puppy and become family for life.

[themysticaljellyfish]

[Sandry] dragged her workbasket over. Fumbling, she yanked out three coils of silk, one green, one pale gray, one bright red. [Sandry's Book, Chapter 1]

She braids these three threads together on the next page, and braids light into them to use as a lamp.

These three colors are, of course, thematically representative of Briar, Tris, and Daja. The go-to color for Tris fluctuates a bit (in Daja's Book, it's blue if I remember correctly?), but green and red are pretty consistent for Briar and Daja.

Thematically, not literally, this is the first time Sandry binds the kids together. She's missing a crucial component - herself - and the light in the braid eventually goes out. The next time she, literally not thematically, binds them together, she includes herself, and boy does that magic last.

Am I reading way to much into a single quote in a children's novel? Absolutely, but this is what this reread is all about.

[junipernoon]

I was going to draw Briar slapping Sandry's ass and saying "you can fit so much trauma in this bad boy" at request of my girlfriend. But then I just fell in love with the outfit I was making for Sanry and wanted to sketch the whole thing without Briar in the way. And then I decided I wanted to do a little sketch page of Sandry, so I did the bust and it looked like she was amused and exasperated so "No Briar, that's not how land taxes work..."

And then I had to draw a third thing to fill the space and was thinking about how many laces and ribbons are on all of Sandry's outfits to better facilitate her magic, and how that's probably a pain in the ass to whoever has to undress her.

I didn't ship Briar and Sandry more than any of the other characters in these books until just now. (shrug emoji)

id in alt

[quietflorilegium]

“My dear, think this over,” Shan said. “We could truly be happy together.” “My temper is fraying, and so are your clothes,” she replied evenly.

Tamora Pierce, "The Will of the Empress"

[dangerous-string-tourney]

[elvencantation]

FULL CAST AUDIO IS BACKKKK

[bisexualbaker]

Sandraline fa Toren, is that you?

Princess who likes doing embroidery

She likes it too much

She stayed up all night finishing the embroidery of her gown and then spent the entire ball talking about the techniques she used and how long it took her

She slapped the visiting Prince's hand when he touched her shoulder because "that took me hours and I don't know where your hands have been!"

One of her maids introduced her to weaving and now she's skipping her lessons on statecraft to dye her own wool

She asked for a flock of sheep of her own for her birthday

Her quarters look like a textile goods shop

She hired a new maid to teach her lacemaking

She is the happiest she's ever been and her parents just want to her pay attention in her diplomacy lessons

(she is but she's always doing some kind of fibre craft at the same time and it annoys her tutor)

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Circle Opens Quartet

There is something deep and rich about the Circle Universe that the Circle of Magic quartet illuminated but kind of didn't have space to fully explicate. That's why I am fully and forever grateful that Tamora Pierce followed up Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris on their adventures with their teachers after they're granted their mage credentials. Let's talk the Circle Opens quartet.

While the Circle of Magic books focus on the four protagonists as a quartet in each book (even if the plot might center on a single protagonist), the Circle Opens books see our protagonists hundreds of miles apart and truly having to stand on their own feet and grow their own strengths. They also all get their own students in these books, and seeing how their personalities, teachers, and backgrounds affect how they interact with their students makes these books very, very fun. It also makes these books feel more like true YA than advanced middle grade (which is kind of how the Circle of Magic books read, but that's not a criticism; those books are amazing).

Magic Steps finds Sandry in Emelan caring for Duke Vedris after a stroke and basically low-key running the country while her uncle recovers. On a morning ride, she stumbles across Pasco Acalon as he dances a luck spell for a friend's family of fisherfolk. After some...creative convincing...Pasco agrees that yes, he has magic and needs training. This is where Sandry learns about the condition of her new credentials: If she discovers a new mage, and a teacher with a complementary power set cannot be found, the discovering mage is ethically and legally bound to teach the new mage at least the basics.

As though teaching a reluctant 12-year-old with family baggage and a formerly unknown type of magic wasn't enough, Sandry also has to deal with a blood feud that followed a merchant family to Emelan and has turned ugly. An unmagic mage is helping two assassins commit murder, and in the process is contaminating the city with unmagic.

Unmagic is a super cool concept, because it is the absence of everything and it consumes everything it touches, especially magic. It is horrifying in that it simply is; it's not evil in and of itself but it consumes with no care or compassion, and so in practice, it tends to look evil in an implacable, inevitable sort of way. There was a sense of existential horror to the magic itself that is unusual in Tamora Pierce's work, but was highly effective when pitted against Sandry's radical hope and optimism.

Ultimately, Sandry and Pasco work together to get Pasco's magic under control and bring peace back to the streets of Emelan.

Street Magic finds Briar and Rosethorn in the great, ancient city of Chammur, working with the local Living Circle Temple and beginning Briar's side hustle as a shakkan shaper and merchant. Chammur also brings Briar's past slamming into his present, since the city has a strong gang presence--so strong that they are practically their own political and social force.

This becomes more complicated when Briar discovers that Evvy--a street rat who makes a few coins by polishing stones for souk merchants--is, in fact, a stone mage. When Chammur's official stone mage is revealed to be the world's biggest douchecanoe and Evvy--quite rightly--refuses to have anything to do with him, Briar takes her under his tutelage.

Honestly, the best parts of this book are Briar's relationships with Evvy and Rosethorn. Evvy pokes all kinds of holes in Briar's past worldview and how he sees gangs' function in society. She's also delightful on her own merits, whip smart, and a devoted cat mom.

Briar and Rosethorn's relationship is delightlfully complicated and simultaneously dead simple. After her death in Briar's Book, Rosethorn is a bit physically delicate, and Briar has quietly taken on the role of surrogate son and caretaker, even as Rosethorn is his surrogate mother and teacher. The two of them have complimentary rough edges, and as Rosethorn herself says, they've come so far beyond who owes what to who, and simply are each other's. I love these two.

Cold Fire locates Daja and Frostpine in Namorn in the dead of winter, as Frostpine continues on his quest to expose Daja to as many smiths and craftspeople as possible, broadening her already deep education. While visiting an old friend and his family, Daja discovers that their twin children are mages. Now unlike Sandry and Briar, Daja is able to find mage teachers for her young students, but neither teacher has the time or space to do the basics--so that falls to Daja to teach.

In addition to her very energetic students, Daja is wrapped up in the Kugisko community, including local firefighter Bennat Ladradun. Daja expands her already prodigious skillset to include walking through burning buildings to rescue those trapped inside. She unfortunately has to do this rather a lot, because Kugisko has a firebug.

Ultimately, Daja's story in Namorn is about compassion, patience, and learning to see things as they are, not as she might wish them to be.

Shatterglass shows us Tris and Niko at a magical conference in Tharios, right in the middle of the reign of a Jack the Ripper-esque criminal who is attacking and murdering Yaskedasi--female street dancers. In the midst of academia and murder, Tris finds herself two students: Keth Warder, a journeyman glassblower recovering from a lightning strike, and Glaki, the orphaned daughter of a murdered Yaskedasi Keth was friends with.

Poor Tris never plays life on easy mode. While she isn't the only one of the four mages to take two students, she is the only one with students with such diverse needs. Keth is a grown-ass adult who had training and a career before a lightning strike awakened his ambient magic, whereas Glaki is like four years old and an academic mage. And yet, somehow Tris manages. She looks after both her students and helps the police catch their murderer.

Overall, this quartet is a phenomenal follow up to the Circle of Magic quartet, and I love how the world expands beyond Emelan here. I also love that the tables turn and our students become first-time teachers themselves. If you are any sort of Tamora Pierce fan, I cannot recommend the Circle Universe enough.

[tucsonhorse]

Do you ever reread something from your childhood and every page reminds you that it was one of the primary things that shaped your personality and morality for your entire life? That's pretty much everything Tamora Pierce for me and I love it.

[themysticaljellyfish]

"I'm no mage," [Sandry] argued, resting her head on one hand. "I'm just a girl - a noble girl, worse yet. Like that maid said, 'Good f'r naught but to be waited on and to marry.' Good-for-naught, that's me-" [Sandry's Book, Chapter 1]

This theme of "mage vs noblewoman" really is a throughline for Sandry.

It's not very apparent in the first quartet, as for the most part she is allowed to and encouraged to study magic, despite being a noblewoman. The main exception is in Daja's Book. Both Yarrun, a mage, and Lady Inoulia, a noblewoman, think a form of her magic (weaving) is beneath her.

We're reminded of this theme again, in Magic Steps. Police Captain Qais simultaneously dismisses her for being a noble and for her work as a mage. He does not want to let a noble girl onto a murder scene (i mean. understandably. she's 14.), and dismisses how helpful she was with the magical part of the investigation - simply because her magic is with thread. Despite the fact that the actual investigator mages found her very helpful!

But The Will of the Empress is where this "mage vs noblewoman" theme becomes the most apparent. The Namornese court sees her as a (very rich) noblewoman first, and as a mage in a very distant second. There is even a call back line to the first quote!

"...I’m going mad with all these games people play to get me to do what they want. ‘Fit only to be waited on and to be married,’ remember? It’s what that woman said to me all those years ago? Well, all these curst Namornese think I’m fit for is to be sold off to the highest bidder, like some prize…mule." [The Will of the Empress, Chapter 9]

[asterakifaye]

Tammys books really do hold up over time

Two mini reviews for the price of one today! 😊

Sandry’s Book:

It’s been a very, very long time since I last reread this book and it did not disappoint. It was like coming home and snuggling under a warm blanket. There were so many things that I had forgotten! But getting to meet these characters again? It was so much fun! I loved getting reacquainted with all the kids, and somehow at 30-years-old I feel like I connected more with them than I did when I was 12 or 15. I can also see where my love of found family’s came from. I love the way the Pierce wrote the kids because they got to be actual kids and learn and make mistakes and grow into who they’re meant to be. Sandry’s book is getting a solid five stars, both for the nostalgia and for being a fantastic book that really stands the test of time.

Tris’s book:

Tris’s Book has always been one of my favorites in this series. It’s were these kids really get their start as actual mages and dig into their studies more. I love that they have these mentors that are with them every step of the way and are encouraging them in everything that they do. It’s really nice, especially in a YA book where most adults are usually absent. I just really loved being back in this universe and I could gush about it endlessly, but I won’t. This is getting a solid five stars!

Reading Challenge Prompt Fills:

PopSugar 2023: a book you read more than 10 years ago

PopSugar 2023: a book you wish you could read for the first time again