Book Review: Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce
Aug. 8th, 2016 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Magic Steps (The Circle Opens Book 1)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Published: New York: Scholastic, 2011 (2000)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 198,650
Text Number: 586
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Some years after the first series, the Disciple Cottage students have left on individual journeys; Sandry is aiding her ailing great-uncle when murder upsets the city. The tone and magic here are surprisingly macabre, but the older protagonist and audience allow that. The distance from Disciple makes for nostalgia and reluctant, but necessary, maturation, a combination so effective it's almost self-defeating; like Sandry, I kept wishing for the intimacy of the first series. Although the duke is as fantastic as always, no other characters step up to fill that void, and the new student is particularly unremarkable and makes me worry that the sequels will follow the student-turned-mentor format and grow repetitive. Magic Steps fails to live up to my memory of the Circle of Magic books, but I like it enough to give the sequels a try.
Author: Tamora Pierce
Published: New York: Scholastic, 2011 (2000)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 198,650
Text Number: 586
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Some years after the first series, the Disciple Cottage students have left on individual journeys; Sandry is aiding her ailing great-uncle when murder upsets the city. The tone and magic here are surprisingly macabre, but the older protagonist and audience allow that. The distance from Disciple makes for nostalgia and reluctant, but necessary, maturation, a combination so effective it's almost self-defeating; like Sandry, I kept wishing for the intimacy of the first series. Although the duke is as fantastic as always, no other characters step up to fill that void, and the new student is particularly unremarkable and makes me worry that the sequels will follow the student-turned-mentor format and grow repetitive. Magic Steps fails to live up to my memory of the Circle of Magic books, but I like it enough to give the sequels a try.
