Freedom!

The books have been purchased. Mission accomplished! I didn't pay a penny, either, since I used old gift cards that have been sitting in my wallet for years. Woohoo!

I'm also done with finals, which is a big yay (YAY!) and I'm heading home tomorrow morning with my parental units. I think it'll be good to get away from school for a while. I'm rather in need of a good break, and this semester has been murderously abusive.

Sir Winston Churchill (pictured at right) says that I deserve victory (he IS pointing at me, isn't he?), but I guess that remains to be seen until my grades get posted. In the meantime, I intend on doing little besides relaaaaaxing. Mm.

Book Wishlist

I have literally hundreds of dollars in Borders and Barnes & Noble gift cards sitting in my wallet, and I think it's high time I use them. I have every intention of going on a crazy book binge as soon as my finals are over, and while I'm taking a break from the difficult fifteen minutes of studying I just did, I figure I might as well list some of the books I want to include in my mass purchase. Let's see...

-Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. She wrote what is possible my favorite novel of all time (namely, The Time Traveler's Wife).

-Lucky by Alice Sebold. By the author of the nationally-acclaimed novel The Lovely Bones. Girl's got talent. And it's been a while since I've read a good memoir.

-The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. One of my best buds here at college is a Dawkins lover, so I figure I should give his stuff a try.

-Better by Atul Gawande. I read his book Complications a few years ago and loved it. Though I was pretty burned out in terms of medically-related books after my introductory seminar last Fall, I think it might be time to reopen that sector of literature.

-Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. She writes absolutely amazing short stories. I'm curious what this new anthology looks like in comparison with Interpreter of Maladies, which has to be one of my most favorite short story collections.

-Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Haven't seen the movie yet, and I usually like to read the books before I see the film adaptation. I've been poked and prodded by tons of people to watch the movie, so I should probably get cracking on the book first.

-Book of A Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. I've read some of her other work (see: Austenland, among others), and am curious about this new addition to the litany of books she's written.

I think that's enough for now. My "To Be Read" pile at home is already prodigiously large, and adding to it is probably a really bad idea. OH WELL.

Something I've been wondering about books: What is it with authors these days and book titles like "The _____'s Wife/Sister/Daughter"? When did this title form become so daggone popular? I saw it with The Time Traveler's Wife, and before I knew it it was everywhere! Curious...

Life Update 4

Fully in spite of the general hopeless that is my life right now (finals week starting Monday. Need I go on?), I can safely say that today was one of the best days of the entire semester. I saw something awesome happen today. Sometimes I forget how amazing the people around me are, and then it all comes back to me in a sudden rush that makes it absolutely impossible for me to feel sorry for myself and my pitiful knowledge of chemistry.

Cheers.

To life. L'Chaim!

Watching and waiting is for squares. I hope we've all learned a valuable lesson today.

Book 11: The Realm Of The Gods by Tamora Pierce

This will be the end of my Tamora Pierce kick, or it will be for now. The Realm Of The Gods is the satisfying finish to Tamora Pierce's IMMORTALS series, and the conclusion to Daine's story.

Daine and Numair are facing what is certainly their doom when they are pulled into The Divine Realms by none other than Daine's parents, whose are both lesser gods. Though it is a very tearful reunion for Daine and her mother (who, when still mortal, was murdered by bandits) Daine and Numair must return to the Mortal Realms to help Tortall in her fight against Ozorne, who is back--this time as a conniving Stormwing instead of a conniving emperor, and with plenty of mortal and Immortal allies.

Since the war in the Mortal Realms is going on at the same time as a war between The Greater Gods and the Queen of Chaos (Ozorne+ Chaos=cohorts? Yes.), none of the Gods can be bothered to help Numair and Daine get back home, so the two are forced to make the perilous trip across the Divine Realms to request help from the Dragons. They also discover that they love each other--a wonderfully tender note in an otherwise plot-driven novel.

Once transported back to the Mortal Realms (courtesy of the Dragons), Daine takes on Ozorne in a bloody, decisive battle that ends the fighting in both the Mortal and Divine Realms.

The Realm Of The Gods provides a very fitting end to the series, and quite a satisfying one as well. Though quite fast-paced, the story is still imbued with detail and with enough character development that it doesn't rely completely upon plot. Though the trek through the Divine Realms got a tad monotonous at times, Pierce navigates the story well and does a good job of bringing the series to a fulfilling conclusion.

Grade: A-

Rating: 13+ (violence, mild cursing, romance)

Book 10: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce

This is easily the most intense of Immortals Series novels. In Emperor Mage, the friction between Tortall and Carthak passive-aggressively comes to a head. Tortall sends a delegation of some of its most important, most powerful personalities to Carthak to negotiate a peace with the southern empire and its government. Included in the delegation are the King's Champion, the king's powerful uncle, Numair--once a resident of Carthak and a former friend of the emperor--, and others. And then there's Daine, who was asked by the Emperor Mage himself to come along with the delegation and heal his prized but suddenly sickly pet birds.

In spite of past evidence of his ill intentions towards Tortall, Emperor Ozorne of Carthak proclaims innocence and seems to be the very picture of a benevolent host, which somewhat reassures the very antsy delegation party and confuses Daine, for whom the image of the Emperor's concern for his birds and the devastation visited upon Tortall in his name are at extreme odds. The dynamic between the delegates and the Emperor is complicated by the presence of Numair, who fled Carthak and the Emperor years before the beginning of the series and had been admitted back into the Empire on a tenuous pardon from Ozorne.

Though Ozorne works hard to uphold the image of his "perfect" empire, it becomes increasingly clear that there is something amiss in Carthak. Through the action of the patron goddess of Carthak, the Graveyard Hag, Daine becomes unwillingly involved in both the political and religious struggles of the empire.

All of a sudden, things begin to go wrong. The gods, it is clear, are displeased with Emperor Ozorne, and pressure increases on Daine to act as their chosen vessel.

When everything begins to go wrong and Ozorne commits the most base treachery, Daine uses her powers--both her wild magic and a new power bestowed upon her--to bring Carthak to her knees and destroy the rule of the Emperor Mage.

Clearly, Daine is a total bad-ass.

Emperor Mage is my favorite in the series for a lot of reasons, but especially because of the new landscape we get to explore through Daine's eyes. There is also a great deal of movement in both the emotional and the physical plots, as relationships between the characters deepen and the series begins to realize its final trajectory. It's a pretty rich, evocative read, especially for a book of its sort (let's be honest, now--Tamora Pierce isn't a Tolkien or anything, but she is very good at what she does), and it's quick as well. I flew through this one in four days without sacrificing any work or sleep (though I did spend a lot of time at the gym...I get all of my fun reading done at the gym these days).

For fans of Wild Magic and Wolf-Speaker, this next book in the series will really knock your socks off. It's a fabulously fun read, and it benefits from the fact that it is a later book in the series. It seems to me that Pierce is more comfortable of her characters in this volume than she was in the previous books of the series, and that comfort translates into much more effective writing.

All in all, a job very well done.

Grade: A

Rating: 12+ (advisory: themes of doom, treachery, violence, "canoodling" [though this is only ever made vague mention of])

Book 9: Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce

As you can probably guess, this is the second book in Tamora Pierce's Immortals series. As the sequel to Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker follows Daine's adventures in Tortall with her teacher, Numair Salmalin. In this novel, Daine receives a summons from the Long Lake wolf pack--wolves who once served as her surrogate family following the murder of her mother and grandfather--requesting her help with the human lords of the Dunlath Valley who are systematically destroying the area. However, once there, Daine and Numair find that not only is the environment surrounding the Fief of Dunlath being damaged, but there is also something else awry--and it stinks of high treason on the parts of the lord and lady of Dunlath who are, along with mages and Immortals from the southern empire of Carthak, attempting to overthrow the King and Queen of Tortall.

Daine and Numair become separated from one another and have to work alone to try and stop Yolane and Belden's treacherous plan before they destroy the valley--or worse, succeed at their plot.

This novel further develops the theme of animosity towards Tortall from the Emperor of Carthak, which becomes the primary theme in the last two books of the series. In this novel, Daine's powers also expand from simple communication with animals to the ability to heal them and enter their minds, and later transform completely.

Unlike the first book in the series, Wolf-Speaker is more of a straight-up adventure story and doesn't have nearly as much emotional and relationship development as Wild Magic did. While it was still a pleasant read, it was significantly less engaging than Wild Magic is and in my opinion almost expendable in the grand scheme of the series. Even so, Wolf-Speaker is not lost on the reader; anyone who enjoyed Wild Magic will like Wolf-Speaker as well.

Grade: B+

Rating: 10+ (advisory: mild violence)

Book 8: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

This is a ridiculously long post (I have a long history with this book, so be prepared for storytime if you decide to read the whole dratted thing). If you're just here for the review, scroll until you see the big purple letters.

Anyway.

I picked this book up for the first time when I was in sixth grade, not knowing that it would be responsible for shaping my reading habits for the next three to four years. I devoured it and its sequels before moving on to the author's other books, and then obsessively re-read them again and again. The spine on my copy of this one is absolutely destroyed, which could be credited to the fact that it's a used book, but I choose to peg it on the fact that, once upon a time, it was the most-oft-read book on my shelf.

I generally expect books to lose their charm after a few years, and most of the time they do. There are a few exceptions I've found--Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, for example, or the first of J.K Rowling's Harry Potter Series. No matter how many times I read them, these books never get old. They are just as beloved to me now at nineteen as they were when I first read them as a fourth grader. Personally, I think that is a great feat of writing, and something that authors should be heartily congratulated on. It's easy to go from adoring a book one day to thinking that it isn't anything special the next, especially given the extreme power that public opinion has these days (hello, Twilight? I read it when it was a cool, cult-indie book. Now I wouldn't be caught dead carrying that one around in public; my apologies to Stephenie Meyer).

As I steadily read my way through Tamora Pierce's books, and as I got older, a litany of complaints with her writing sprung up in my head and stayed there, so that long after I stopped reading her books and moved on to more of the "serious literature" that my parents implored me to read instead, I still harbored a strange disdain for her and her work.

Of course, all of my criticisms of her work were completely justified. I still maintain that her later work is not nearly as good as her first couple series, and that her characters tend to become anti-stereotypes (ex: the bad-ass queen who bags bandits on horseback in taffeta ball gowns) and the kingdoms she "creates" are eventually very easy to identify as direct copies from real, existing countries. BUT, in my haste to "move on" and cover my tracks as one of the formerly Tamora Pierce-obsessed, I think I might have gone a little too far.

It had been years since I'd even paid a real thought to Tamora Pierce when I desperately grabbed Wild Magic off of my bookshelf as I left home on my way to the airport during a recent holiday from college. Last year, I came to school laden with books that I intended to read over the course of the school year. But at the end of the term, I hadn't properly finished even a single one. So this time when I packed to head back to school all the books I brought were academic, sparing two, and even those two aren't all that compelling as far as novels go. I read enough of the heavy stuff for my classes, so when I'm looking for some bedtime reading, I definitely don't turn to Feynman's Six Easy Pieces or Nehru's biography for a literary lullaby (unless I wanted to either bore myself to sleep or be lulled by words that are too big for a sleepy 2AM brain). When I look for a book to keep myself happy and entertained, especially nowadays, I find that I'm more likely to turn to the old faithfuls.

I started reading Wild Magic on the plane flight back to school, and was pretty surprised to find that it was more or less as good now as it was when I first read it. I suppose it was unexpected because of all the mental bashing I'd done of Tamora Pierce's work, but the characters still sprang out of the page and the plot still gripped like it used to. Granted, I'm now painfully aware of all the weird, unnecessary, annoying things that Pierce does with her writing, but I'm also willing to overlook all of that for the sheer enjoyment I got out of readingWild Magic. As my friend Eldridge so aptly described it, reading an easy, fun novel like that is like a brain massage--and goodness knows I need as many of those as I can get this year! I finished the book feeling rejuvenated and, for the first time in a while, excited about reading. It's been too long since I've wanted to find an excuse to pick up a book (I went so far as to go to the gym and work out for a good hour just so I could read while doing so).

Anyway, on to the review. God, this has been a long-winded post.

Alright. So, Wild Magic and its three sequels follow the adventures of Veralidaine "Daine" Sarrasri (Ridonkulous name? Yes, I think so) as she attempts to find her way in the kingdom of Tortall after her escape from her village in the country of Galla. She is young--about thirteen--, pretty, and a skilled archer. Her best friend is a ornery pony named Cloud. We quickly learn that she is an orphan (her family was killed by bandits) and that she has what she calls a "knack with animals". She meets Onua, the woman responsible for choosing horses and ponies for the Tortallan Royal Stables, and gets hired on to be her assistant. Together, the two lead the new herd of ponies south towards Tortall, getting into their share of trouble along the way.

With the help and tutelage of Tortallan mage Numair Salmalin, Daine discovers that she possesses wild magic, a rare type of magic that gives her a connection to animals (among other things). She learns to tap into it, and tackles her difficult past along the way. As her magic becomes stronger, Daine realizes that she can sense the presence of and communicate with Immortals--mythical and often dangerous creatures that were banished to the Divine Realms hundreds of years ago by mortal mages. This skill proves very useful when it comes to light that meddling sorcerers have begun releasing the immortals into the Mortal Realms. The story comes to a head when she and her new friends are attacked by raiders intent on the destruction of the Tortallan royal family. With the help of her magic, Daine helps save the day and discovers herself at home in a new country.

Wild Magic was and still is a fantastically satisfying read. I recommend it to anyone above the age of 10, and especially to those fantasy-inclined (but reluctant) readers. Tamora Pierce's work is both fun and easy to read.

Grade: A

Rating: 10+ (advisory: violence)