28 March, 2002
Magic Steps
Tamora Pierce
2000
264 pp
This review was posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written. You can read the discussion here.
Three books in a row (The Little Sister, Way Station, and Night) featuring lonely, alienated protagonists is plenty.
This book is the first in The Circle Opens, the sequel-series to Pierce's Magic Circle series. The Magic Circle series is the story of four children, from diverse backgrounds, who come together at the Winding Circle school for magic. Central to the series is the close friendship which develops among the children. So, I figured that a sequel featuring the same characters would be a sure way to steer clear of alienated protagonists.
Magic Steps takes place four years after the Magic Circle series, and doesn't feature all four main characters from the previous series. The four have split up, to experience the world away from school on journeys with their individual teachers. Only one of them stays in town-- Sandry the weaver-mage. Instead of travelling, she's stayed in town to care for her uncle the Duke, who's recovering from a heart attack. Magic Steps focuses on Sandry, who discovers a boy with an unusual magical ability-- his magic is expressed through dance. by the rules of the Winding Circle school, she's obligated to teach him how to manage his power, even though she's still a student herself. Additionally, the city is in an uproar over a series of gruesome murders: members of a prominent merchant family are being killed by invisible assassins who have the power to evade guards and penetrate magic wards at will. Eventually, it transpires that Sandry and her student must use their unique talents to help capture the killers.
The book did help scratch my itch for protagonists with friends and family. Both Sandry and her student Pasco are well-connected, with plenty of people they care about and who care about them. Even so, I was disappointed that the entire group of four from the Magic Circle series didn't appear in Magic Steps. I was hoping that this sequel series would explore how the childrens' relationship would develop as they grew up. Instead, it seems like it's about their experiences apart from one another, as they explore the world outside their school.
As a graduate student, I was certainly able to sympathise with Sandry's being thrust, completely unprepared, into a teaching situation, and it's to Pierce's credit that she doesn't make it easy on Sandry. I think that the Winding Circle's rule on teaching ("If no teacher with the same power is available, the discovering mage has to teach the newcomer the basics.") is idiotic. In the previous series, and even in this book, it's stressed time and again how dangerous new mages are, until they learn to control their powers. Allowing inexperienced students to teach these dangerous raw beginners just seems like a bad idea. I guess senior faculty will do anything to get out of teaching, even in fantasy-land. Anyway, it provides a motivation for the plot.
There wasn't anything astoundingly original about this book, but it's well-written and engaging. I'll buy the sequels, but not in hardcover.