I've kept up with reading Pierce's books even as I grew older. There's something about them that goes deeper than the demographic they are geared towards. I love the gritty realism that she places in all of her "fantasy" books. They talk about mud and guts, all matter of vomit and piss and dung, the unfortunate reality of periods and puberty, hormones, you name it. Something that other books don't really go into for probably good reason. It takes away the "glamour" of the book. But for someone who knows that the medieval ages weren't all kings and queens, funny hats, gleaming jewels and sharp swords but a place where there was filth everywhere and disease running rampant in the city streets, Pierce's books (all placed in another world but during a period much like our Medieval Era) bring a startling amount of truth to the conditions of how humans lived back then. Now, her characters have the added comfort of magic to help ease their tough lives but she's careful to keep the setting as practical as possible.
She also writes all about women power and I love love love her for that. These are the books that little girls should be reading. They inspire strength and power in women, that girls can do anything no matter how much men may try to put us down, that we are worth something, not meant to be just stuck in the kitchen "barefoot and pregnant" but can do something worthwhile with out lives. I have to say I get some of my "women power" streak from her books. Her heroines are all people to look up to, overcoming adversity and society's norms with determination, perseverance and a steel will to do what is right, to not stand down for the sake of their fellow women and men. All lessons that should be learned by women today really. That we are not second class citizens, that we should not let our bodies be exploited, that we need to fight for our equality and change men's thinking of what a woman is or what women should be. We are strong. Not the lessons from books like Twilight where the woman is there to be helpless and the damsel-in-distress. Where she is only meant to be the girlfriend or wife of a "powerful" man.
Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper series is about a Provost's Guard named Beka Cooper. The Provost's Guards are like the cops of the bigger cities. They are nicknamed "Dogs" because well I don't know why. Throughout the series, the audience gets to watch Beka grow up from trainee to full-fledged Guard. In Mastiff she is a fourth year Dog and on her biggest "Hunt" yet. The King's son gets kidnapped and made to be a slave. There's all sorts of politics involved like the fact that the King is trying to wage a bigger tax on the nobles and mages of the land so they kidnapped the Prince to gain leverage on the King before plotting to kill the King, Queen and Prince and put the King's brother on the throne, someone who can be more easily controlled.
It's an engaging book and I couldn't put it down. She weaves the fantastical and the hyper-real together in a such a way that the magic almost seems real. The characters are inventive and amazing. There are a lot of them though, and hard to keep track of. I felt the pace dragged a bit because a lot of it is truly a hunt, where they're on the road a lot, camping and searching for the missing Prince. Because it is written from Beka's perspective, a lot of the book is Beka's thoughts or observations which can get bogged down in directions of where they are or what her deeper emotions may be. There was a bit less action this time around. I thought the traitor plot was the most interesting. Once there was even a hint that there might be a traitor, the whole time you're trying to guess who it is. The end was a shock to me. I had a feeling Tunstall might die from a bit of foreshadowing in the beginning but I didn't think he was going to be the traitor. That was the only part that upset me the most because two books are spent with him being a great person and in this one he turns out to be one of the bad guys. I felt that it went against his personality actually and when he dies I was feeling extremely upset. I didn't think he had it in him to be a childkiller or a traitor to the Kingdom. He ends up dying and everyone doesn't feel that bad. Beka spends a few paragraphs grieving for him and then that's it while I'm still reeling from the shock. At the end no seems to feel bad for him at all. He was Beka's partner and he's just forgotten, just like that. It seriously felt like he was out of character for the end of the book. But what I like about Pierce is that she does add things like that, that people are not as good as everyone thinks or not as bad especially in the subsequent novels that she has been publishing. Everyone has a bit of both in them and she's right to try to make as complex a character as she can. It's upsetting but I'm sure Benedict Arnold was a great guy before he decided to become a traitor.
That doesn't mean I don't still feel really upset. I shouldn't be this upset about a fictional character but I do get attached to them. And none of her other books in this series had meaningless deaths of people that I cared about so I guess it was due. But she has a tendency of killing off people that I've grown attached to. In Alanna, Faithful dies or er returns to his rightful place and I was extremely sad about that, as well as her brother Tom, Master Si-Cham and Liam. In Daine's books, she killed off Rikash. In Kel's books, who didn't she kill off...? There was a high death toll in those books and each one was meant to be like a stab to your heart.
And the end was a bit rushed. It was unfortunate that she didn't expand the ending just a bit to Beka and Farmer's wedding. I did like her subtle building of their relationship though. It wasn't too all off a sudden that they loved each other and there wasn't the overdone underlying sexual tension that's been prevalent in a lot of fiction lately. It was more gradually built like how most relationships are and then there was a revelation about the other person that is more in line with how a lot of relationships are today.
All in all, I would recommend this book for all Tamora Pierce lovers. It was a solid addition and ending to the series but I wouldn't consider it her strongest work. It was a bit too convoluted in description and plot with too many threads of story trying to come together in one cohesive book which I don't think worked as well.
I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
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