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Tamora Pierce: Enter the Circle Sampler
Scholastic books promotional sampler. With chapters from Sandry's Book, Magic Steps (Tamora Pierce), Song Quest, and Spellfall (Katherine Roberts).
87 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
406 people want to read
About the author
Tamora Pierce
101 books85.4k followersHey, folks! I just discovered that apparently I have given some very popular books single-star ratings--except I haven't. How do I know I haven't? Because I haven't read those books at all. So before you go getting all hacked off at me for trashing your favorites, know that I've written GoodReads to find out what's going on.
I return to my regularly scheduled profile:
Though I would love to join groups, I'm going to turn them all down. I just don't have the time to take part, so please don't be offended if I don't join your group or accept an invitation. I'm not snooty--I'm just up to my eyeballs in work and appearances!
Also, don't be alarmed by the number of books I've read. When I get bored, I go through the different lists and rediscover books I've read in the past. It's a very evil way to use up time when I should be doing other things. Obviously, I've read a lot of books in 54 years!
I was born in South Connellsville, PA. My mother wanted to name me "Tamara" but the nurse who filled out my birth certificate misspelled it as "Tamora". When I was 8 my family moved to California, where we lived for 6 years on both sides of the San Francisco peninsula.
I started writing stories in 6th grade. My interest in fantasy and science fiction began when I was introduced to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkien and so I started to write the kind of books that I was reading. After my parents divorced, my mother took my sisters and me back to Pennsylvania in 1969. There I went to Albert Gallatin Senior High for 2 years and Uniontown Area Senior High School for my senior year.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, I wrote the book that became The Song of the Lioness fantasy quartet. I sold some articles and 2 short stories and wrote reviews for a martial arts movie magazine. At last the first book of the quartet, Alanna: The First Adventure was published by Atheneum Books in 1983.
Tim Liebe, who became my Spouse-Creature, and I lived in New York City with assorted cats and two parakeets from 1982 - 2006. In 2006 we moved to Syracuse, New York, where we live now with assorted cats, a number of squirrels, birds, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and woodchucks visiting our very small yard. As of 2011, I have 27 novels in print, one short story collection, one comic book arc ("White Tiger: A Hero's Compulsion") co-written with Tim, and a short story anthology co-editing credit. There's more to come, including a companion book to the Tortall `verse. So stay tuned!
I return to my regularly scheduled profile:
Though I would love to join groups, I'm going to turn them all down. I just don't have the time to take part, so please don't be offended if I don't join your group or accept an invitation. I'm not snooty--I'm just up to my eyeballs in work and appearances!
Also, don't be alarmed by the number of books I've read. When I get bored, I go through the different lists and rediscover books I've read in the past. It's a very evil way to use up time when I should be doing other things. Obviously, I've read a lot of books in 54 years!
I was born in South Connellsville, PA. My mother wanted to name me "Tamara" but the nurse who filled out my birth certificate misspelled it as "Tamora". When I was 8 my family moved to California, where we lived for 6 years on both sides of the San Francisco peninsula.
I started writing stories in 6th grade. My interest in fantasy and science fiction began when I was introduced to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkien and so I started to write the kind of books that I was reading. After my parents divorced, my mother took my sisters and me back to Pennsylvania in 1969. There I went to Albert Gallatin Senior High for 2 years and Uniontown Area Senior High School for my senior year.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, I wrote the book that became The Song of the Lioness fantasy quartet. I sold some articles and 2 short stories and wrote reviews for a martial arts movie magazine. At last the first book of the quartet, Alanna: The First Adventure was published by Atheneum Books in 1983.
Tim Liebe, who became my Spouse-Creature, and I lived in New York City with assorted cats and two parakeets from 1982 - 2006. In 2006 we moved to Syracuse, New York, where we live now with assorted cats, a number of squirrels, birds, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and woodchucks visiting our very small yard. As of 2011, I have 27 novels in print, one short story collection, one comic book arc ("White Tiger: A Hero's Compulsion") co-written with Tim, and a short story anthology co-editing credit. There's more to come, including a companion book to the Tortall `verse. So stay tuned!
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 11, 2016
This is my review for the entire Circle of Magic quartet. There may be spoilers ahead, read at your own discretion.
Plot
Each book in the series has about the same plot, except for the final book, Briar’s Book. There’s a hint of some problem in the beginning of the book, the children learn some magic, the problem becomes very big, and then the finale is the title character using some new aspect of their magic to save the day. These aren’t terrible plots at all, but it does make the books a bit boring if read one after the other in a short amount of time. One reviewer likened it to “eating four different tubs of ice cream in one sitting”. You may love ice cream, and you might like the plot in the first book, but the same basic thing again and again makes things stale. The meat of the stories is different, and deal with something personal to the title character (again, barring Briar’s story), but the bones are the same.
Briar’s Book is different in there isn’t much of him dealing with some problem on his own and there is no new understanding or level to his magic that the girls get. It’s a bit of a letdown because the readers are treated to these powerful climaxes that Briar just doesn’t get in his book. Additionally, the antagonist in Briar’s Book is a slow moving one, disease, unlike with the girls, who deal with an earthquake, pirates, and a forest fire.
Writing
Tamora Pierce is a good writer. While I admit her worldbuilding isn’t the best, her writing is very good in the majority of the books. Her writing shines when she writes very bluntly. Instead of trying to describe magic in an abstract sense, it’s best when she just comes out and says this or that is what the magic is doing. There’s a lot of that kind of writing in the last two books. When she tries to write in an abstract and light way, it comes across as confusing. This was more so her writing in the first two books. It was nothing too bad to where it’s completely misunderstood, but she shines on one area and not another. Overall, her writing is easy to get into and follow along with.
Characters
The main characters are Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar. Along with them are the secondary characters, their teachers, Lark, Niko, Frostpine, and Rosethorn. Each character has a unique personality that, even by the first book, was pretty fleshed out. We have eight different people and it really shows. More and more of their own personalities show through the rest of the books. The books feel more character-focused, which is probably why such effort was put into developing the characters to the readers.
Things I Liked
One of the things I loved most about the series was the creation of the Trader culture. With books that have some base in European geography and culture, there aren’t very many unique cultures that the average reader hasn’t seen before. Sandry and Tris grew up in a society that was probably exclusively European. Whereas Daja was part of an almost nomadic group of people that had their own rules and customs. I only wish that each of the other children had their own unique culture as well.
I also liked how the relationship between our main four slowly evolve. They went from strangers who didn’t want anything to do with one another to siblings who obviously loved each other very much. And the progression didn’t happen in a flash. The relationship between the four evolved further and further through each book.
Things I Didn't Like
The first thing I didn’t like was how the only boy of the group was relegated to the role of “street rat”. Whenever a character in a group is raised on the streets, it’s always the male character. I feel like Pierce could have had a much more interesting dynamic if she had switched the roles of Briar and Sandry. If Sandry was the street rat and had an affinity for plant magic and Briar was a rich, spoiled noble that was skilled in the seemingly traditional feminine thread magic. It would have been a more interesting dynamic and I think Pierce really missed a chance to subvert some tropes.
The second thing I didn’t like was how there wasn’t really a system of magic that was set up. The reader doesn’t know where magic comes from, the difference between mages and other magic-users, what makes an ambient mage, how getting a mage’s credentials works, or even how the hierarchy in Winding Circle Temple works. There’s a lot about magic in this world that the reader has to try to piece together when given the tiniest bits of information. This can become a hindrance when, for example, the reader is constantly told how powerful our four protagonists are, but we have no frame of reference, and thus these statements become meaningless. When you don’t know what constitutes as “strong” or “weak”, you don’t really know where the characters stand either.
Diversity
Despite being published in the 90s, and being written by a white woman, there is a good amount of diversity in the quartet of books. Racially, two out of our four main characters aren’t white. Daja is black and Briar’s real-world race could be of Vietnamese, Thai, or some other Southeast Asian descent. Three of the four children are girls. Of their four teachers, two are women, one, Lark, seemingly of Southeast Asian descent like Briar, and one, Rosethorn, white. The two other teachers are male, Frostpine being described as black like Daja, and Niko being white. There are a multitude of characters who are of many different races throughout all four books. White characters are described as being white, eliminating the “white as default” that a lot of books often are subject to.
There are no transgender characters, no confirmed same-gender couples, or any character confirmed to be non-straight. There has been speculation into the exact relationship between Lark and Rosethorn, as it is heavily implied to be romantic, but there is no official confirmation in the books.
Tris, one of the white girls, is the only character the books interact with that isn’t skinny. She stays fat through the books. There is one disabled character in Daja’s Book, Polyam, who is an amputee, blind in one eye, and has substantial scarring on her face and body. She isn’t magically healed by the end of the book, but she does get a prosthetic leg at the end, so take that how you will. There are no mental disorders described in the book.
Despite lacking gender and sexuality diversity, the Circle of Magic quartet has a lot more diversity than books nowadays do.
Overall
The Circle of Magic quartet was an interesting and fun read. Through it we met four amazing children who slowly became a family and began to discover the true potential of their magic. It was a very fun series and I might be picking up the other books in this world in the future. I thank Tamora Pierce for inviting me into her world of magic.
Plot
Each book in the series has about the same plot, except for the final book, Briar’s Book. There’s a hint of some problem in the beginning of the book, the children learn some magic, the problem becomes very big, and then the finale is the title character using some new aspect of their magic to save the day. These aren’t terrible plots at all, but it does make the books a bit boring if read one after the other in a short amount of time. One reviewer likened it to “eating four different tubs of ice cream in one sitting”. You may love ice cream, and you might like the plot in the first book, but the same basic thing again and again makes things stale. The meat of the stories is different, and deal with something personal to the title character (again, barring Briar’s story), but the bones are the same.
Briar’s Book is different in there isn’t much of him dealing with some problem on his own and there is no new understanding or level to his magic that the girls get. It’s a bit of a letdown because the readers are treated to these powerful climaxes that Briar just doesn’t get in his book. Additionally, the antagonist in Briar’s Book is a slow moving one, disease, unlike with the girls, who deal with an earthquake, pirates, and a forest fire.
Writing
Tamora Pierce is a good writer. While I admit her worldbuilding isn’t the best, her writing is very good in the majority of the books. Her writing shines when she writes very bluntly. Instead of trying to describe magic in an abstract sense, it’s best when she just comes out and says this or that is what the magic is doing. There’s a lot of that kind of writing in the last two books. When she tries to write in an abstract and light way, it comes across as confusing. This was more so her writing in the first two books. It was nothing too bad to where it’s completely misunderstood, but she shines on one area and not another. Overall, her writing is easy to get into and follow along with.
Characters
The main characters are Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar. Along with them are the secondary characters, their teachers, Lark, Niko, Frostpine, and Rosethorn. Each character has a unique personality that, even by the first book, was pretty fleshed out. We have eight different people and it really shows. More and more of their own personalities show through the rest of the books. The books feel more character-focused, which is probably why such effort was put into developing the characters to the readers.
Things I Liked
One of the things I loved most about the series was the creation of the Trader culture. With books that have some base in European geography and culture, there aren’t very many unique cultures that the average reader hasn’t seen before. Sandry and Tris grew up in a society that was probably exclusively European. Whereas Daja was part of an almost nomadic group of people that had their own rules and customs. I only wish that each of the other children had their own unique culture as well.
I also liked how the relationship between our main four slowly evolve. They went from strangers who didn’t want anything to do with one another to siblings who obviously loved each other very much. And the progression didn’t happen in a flash. The relationship between the four evolved further and further through each book.
Things I Didn't Like
The first thing I didn’t like was how the only boy of the group was relegated to the role of “street rat”. Whenever a character in a group is raised on the streets, it’s always the male character. I feel like Pierce could have had a much more interesting dynamic if she had switched the roles of Briar and Sandry. If Sandry was the street rat and had an affinity for plant magic and Briar was a rich, spoiled noble that was skilled in the seemingly traditional feminine thread magic. It would have been a more interesting dynamic and I think Pierce really missed a chance to subvert some tropes.
The second thing I didn’t like was how there wasn’t really a system of magic that was set up. The reader doesn’t know where magic comes from, the difference between mages and other magic-users, what makes an ambient mage, how getting a mage’s credentials works, or even how the hierarchy in Winding Circle Temple works. There’s a lot about magic in this world that the reader has to try to piece together when given the tiniest bits of information. This can become a hindrance when, for example, the reader is constantly told how powerful our four protagonists are, but we have no frame of reference, and thus these statements become meaningless. When you don’t know what constitutes as “strong” or “weak”, you don’t really know where the characters stand either.
Diversity
Despite being published in the 90s, and being written by a white woman, there is a good amount of diversity in the quartet of books. Racially, two out of our four main characters aren’t white. Daja is black and Briar’s real-world race could be of Vietnamese, Thai, or some other Southeast Asian descent. Three of the four children are girls. Of their four teachers, two are women, one, Lark, seemingly of Southeast Asian descent like Briar, and one, Rosethorn, white. The two other teachers are male, Frostpine being described as black like Daja, and Niko being white. There are a multitude of characters who are of many different races throughout all four books. White characters are described as being white, eliminating the “white as default” that a lot of books often are subject to.
There are no transgender characters, no confirmed same-gender couples, or any character confirmed to be non-straight. There has been speculation into the exact relationship between Lark and Rosethorn, as it is heavily implied to be romantic, but there is no official confirmation in the books.
Tris, one of the white girls, is the only character the books interact with that isn’t skinny. She stays fat through the books. There is one disabled character in Daja’s Book, Polyam, who is an amputee, blind in one eye, and has substantial scarring on her face and body. She isn’t magically healed by the end of the book, but she does get a prosthetic leg at the end, so take that how you will. There are no mental disorders described in the book.
Despite lacking gender and sexuality diversity, the Circle of Magic quartet has a lot more diversity than books nowadays do.
Overall
The Circle of Magic quartet was an interesting and fun read. Through it we met four amazing children who slowly became a family and began to discover the true potential of their magic. It was a very fun series and I might be picking up the other books in this world in the future. I thank Tamora Pierce for inviting me into her world of magic.
October 6, 2022
All four of the books included in this sampler are favorites from my childhood years and they're all still sitting on my shelf (along with this sampler, haha).
April 12, 2015
I love Tamora Pierce's books. Every book has strong female heroines which is why I bought the full set for my niece, who loves them too. I strongly suggest this and all her other books to fantasy loving females young and old!!
January 19, 2016
I remember this feeling like the real world for fantasy teens. :P I, of course, was drawn to the shy, goody goody ones, if memory serves. Otherwise, the world of the Circle of Magic didn't leave nearly as much of an impression on me as did the Immortals series, and Tortall in general.
March 25, 2016
Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews