#Circle of Magic

[whimsicallywiddershins]

When I was young and I first read Briar's Book, it wasn't my favorite. It had slow parts, and it wasn't too exciting, not like wildfires and pirates.

But now, reading it again as an adult, after living through the covid pandemic, it's amazing.

I am amazed at the research Tamora Pierce must have put in for the book! The events of the books are nearly identical to the covid pandemic.

It's amazing she even chose plague as a topic for her fantasy children's story. It's not exactly a normal plot line for such books. And she didn't go the easy way out of *hurr durr medieval society uses leeches and doesn't understand how germs work* option that so many fantasy writers use. Instead, she came up with a believable system that supplemented magic with technology.

The healers using magic to check the body to see what the pox did, the magic sample boxes, the magic diagnosis tools, the use of herbs and magic gems to find the "keys" to the cure... even the use of magic to distill the essence of the disease in order to study it. All combined with the good leadership of Duke Vedris, who followed the epidemic procedures written by the Living Temple to try to halt the pox. He enforced quarantine on the guards that handled the sick, cleared out warehouses to make hospitals, forced everyone to wear gloves and masks, paid people to collect the dead and burn them, ect.

The way Tamora Pierce perfectly captured to fear of the pandemic. The fear of getting sick, the dread of the knowledge of new cases and deaths, the exhaustion of the medical workers and support staff, the way the healers drained themselves dry and got sick.

It all combined into a realistic magic plauge that made an incredible book far before it's time.

[indelibleevidence]

The Circle of Magic books are great, because they're like, "Do you have a magical special interest? Then it's off to Lesbian Nun Cottage for you, children!"

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

John Toffler- The Rifter by Ginn Hale

Alec of Kerry- Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewelling

Achilles- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Daja Kisubo- Circle of Magic by Tamora Pierce

[spiritintheinkwell]

My book club is reading the Emelan books, and I'm shocked that I have no record of ever drawing all four kids together! Couldn't let that situation continue~

[ace-artemis-fanartist]

Briar Moss.

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[arisingonmorningsinnocent]

tamora pierce [handshake] rebecca sugar

writing a whole subplot into a much larger story just to teach their audience of small children how to meditate

does anyone else who read the circle of magic series when we were kids still default to niko's 7-7-7 breathing exercise whenever they need to calm down? or is that just me?

[unfavorableinstigation]

Bless Tamora Pierce for making 'mast buildup' a childhood terror for so many of us. The Bermuda Triangle and quicksand may not have held up, but by god the mast buildup retains its relevance.

[eviefrie]

can you imagine being briar moss when all those girls started menstruating. it's a miracle nobody died

[greatcometdeservedbetter]

Nothing makes me feel more like the Joker than knowing that Tamora Pierce has an entire novel about Tris at Lightbridge that will just… never be published? Apparently?

Anyway, as a poor substitute, here’s a list of things my brain has decided happens in that book:

Tris attends under a pseudonym, as planned, and no one knows about her connection to Niko or anything about her life at Winding Circle. She is one of many children of middling merchant families in her class.

Due to a mixup, she is assigned a roommate. For the first time in a long time, Tris has no access to power or connections and so she has to put up with it.

Most of her professors find her difficult to work with because she does not limit her study of their subjects to the traditional curriculum. Maybe one or two professors pay her special attention and praise, enough that her classmates are made aware of how talented she is.

Despite having no information about her except her milquetoast background, her classmates still find her strange and difficult. Her unexplained talent and advancement for a freshman leaves her isolated from her peers.

Gradually, Tris finds herself writing to her siblings less and less because she isn’t sure how to keep her unhappiness out of the message.

Making things worse is the roommate, who turns out to have a remarkably similar kind of backstory to Tris. Maybe she’s an orphan or a scholarship kid; her magic was definitely discovered later in life after a lot of hardship. Everyone in the school embraces her and finds her endlessly charming despite her social sort comings.

Poor Tris sits in the corner of their room while her roommate goes on about all the parties and dinners and whatnot their classmates have invited her to.

Only one student really tries to befriend her. He doesn’t have a name but he looks like a young Tom Hopper (Black Sails/Umbrella Academy). A super outgoing young mage from a working class family, he’s very adept at physical magical workings and is always outside doing like pushups and stuff where people can see him. He’s not used to an academic setting, though, and anytime he sees his pull ups catch Tris’ attention, he always calls out to her and sometimes asks for her help with classwork. She finds him annoying but still helps him when be asks because no one else talks to her.

She doesn’t know how he got into the university because he is. Shockingly bad at magic.

At one point, Nico visits. He tries to keep a low profile, but some of her classmates notice them spending time together. It immediately becomes the only thing anyone talks to her about, which is the opposite of what she wants so she starts being extra prickly and avoidant to make them stop.

This goes on for a while. Lonely Tris avoids her classmates and focuses on her studies. Presumably some kind of mystery is afoot and she can throw herself into that instead of wallowing in her misery.

At the midway point, she gets more visitors. Possibly all three of her siblings, but At minimum Briar.

For the sake of moving along, let’s say it’s just Briar. They connect mentally way before he arrives and any annoyance he has at her lack of communication dispels when he feels her frustration and sadness through the bond. He rolls up ready to be her social lubricant.

He introduces himself as her brother, never mind why they don’t look alike, and easily blends into the crowd at school for a few weeks. He makes friends effortlessly, gets invited to all kinds of parties and events, and even shows off a bit of his ambient magic during classes.

This infuriates Tris. They have a fight about it shortly before he leaves. Briar rightly points out that all the work she’s doing to lie about so many big parts of her life is preventing her from seeing the obvious - that many of her classmates have been trying really hard to make friends with her.

Her roommate only told her about things she was invited to in order to gauge if Tris would also be interested and to try and invite her along! And the boy constantly doing pushups in front of her actually has better grades than he lets on because he’s looking for excuses to spend time with her and all she seems to do is study. People only asked about Nico because he was the first concrete bit of information about her that anyone had!

It takes Tris a bit of time to process this, and she will have broken some bridges beyond repair already, but she does eventually see it and slowly starts to reach out.

Her circle (ha) stays small, but her life at Lightsbridge vastly improves once she starts seeing her classmates’ bids for connection for what they are.

As she gets comfortable with people, she gets key gossip and information about the school that she had previously been missing out on. Now the mystery becomes solvable.

It was probably whatever authority figure was nice to her in the beginning. Secret, asshole me too type behavior maybe.

She ends her first year better than she started it, with a good bunch of pals to help her out going forward, and a lot more confidence in her abilities.

Maybe she visits home over the summer or maybe we cut to after her graduation, but we see her return to Emelan at the end of the book

Whoever didn’t get to see her during the plot has a chance to hug and scold her for being standoffish. Then Briar’s like “and anyway, that guy who’s obviously in love with you asked if he could stay with us for a few weeks while he gets settled at his new job, and I told him sure”

And Tris is like “What guy? No one at school was in love with me.”

And then knock knock it’s the beefy-but-smart guy at the door and Tris is like “oh shit”

End book

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

F/F Couples

Round 2

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Lin Qingyu/Lu Wancheng- Married Thrice to Salted Fish by Bikabi

Rosethorn/Lark- The Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce 

Justin "Matts" Matthews/Sydney Warren- Free From Falling by E. L. Massey

Song Qingshi/Yue Wuhuan- Mistakenly Saving the Villain by Feng Yu Nie 

[nimuetheseawitch]

Oh no. I'm feeling a Tamora Pierce reread coming on. It's been about a year. So many books....

[fiction-quotes]

She was pressed – jammed – into a corner formed by chunks of stone. Someone's knee poked into her thigh on one side. Someone else's foot dug into her calf on the other. There had been four of them, and a dog, trapped in a bubble in the ground. The first part of an earthquake was just fading, and the rest about to roll over them like high tide pounding the harbour walls.

Sweat poured down her cheeks and back. Half-turning, she thrust her hands palm-flat on either side of a crack between the stones. Calling to the power inside her, she sent her magic through the gap. Earth-waves were coming her way, small ones in front, bigger ones behind. Their force heated dirt and stones, spreading everywhere. Her bones felt like huge rocks, pressed together so hard that something would have to give. They would slip alongside one another with a crash, forcing buildings and streets and whole cities into new shapes.

And the heat, the earth's heat was cooking her and the friends whose bodies pressed against hers. The hot waves roared through the ground, gaining strength as they travelled. When they hit, she could choose between being roasted or crushed; the earth around her small hollow would clench like a fist –

  —  The Power in the Storm (Tamora Pierce)