Terrier

Now this is more like it! Since Tamora Pierce was my favourite author back in my teens, I'd recently bought the remaining books of hers that I hadn't yet read. Melting Stones and iBattle Magic had left me a little disappointed, wondering if perhaps I'd grown up too much to enjoy her writing any more.

But Terrier brought back all that old magic. It was nice to be back in familiar Tortall, which I've always preferred to the Emelan universe anyway. And rather than being childish and simplistic like the previous two books I'd read, this one didn't insult my intelligence and explored complex concepts such as class boundaries, family alienation and the dynamics of abusive relationships with some degree of sophistication.

Beka as a character show more resonated with me. I too am a socially awkward and conscientious woman who nevertheless craves human company. One of fantasy's main draw cards is as a vector for wish-fulfillment, but little did I expect the wish-fulfillment I'd find here would be of the "friends who choose you despite your awkwardness" variety.

I always like books with their own "language" so I enjoyed the lower-class cant that Beka uses. And Tamora finally manages to drop my pet peeve of using "rump" when referring to human rear ends and actually uses the word "bum" - though it still seems out of place in the mouths of rough characters who I'd expect to use a much more colourful term! show less

Over one hundred years before Alanna was living, Rebakah Cooper's dream was to be one of the Provost Guards, known as "Dogs." Given the chance to be a Puppy to two of the best, Beka can't wait to learn more but she's so shy that she can barely look her Dogs in the face. Then, her friend Tansy's son Rolond goes missing. So many go missing in the Lower City that there are not enough Dogs to look into it. Beka must use her ingenuity and magical ability to hear the dead to learn what happened to Rolond and the other children taken and killed by someone calling himself the Shadow Snake. Now, she just has to gather enough solid facts for her Dogs to take up the hunt as well.

I like Beka a lot. She's tough and she's determined. Her world is not show more always black and white - the Dogs take bribes but not to evil purposes, and there is only so much they can do in a city teeming with crime. Even though Beka's narrating the story, the other characters have meat on their bones. For example, Tunstall and Goodwin, Beka's Dogs, each have their own personality and we get a sense of their relationship as partners as well. There are a lot of characters to keep up with, so much so that there is a list in the back of the book, though I'd recommend you look at it only after finishing, as there are spoilers included. The story is well-paced, and even at 500+ pages, the last hundred or so read very quickly as the solutions to the mystery come together. I'll see what I think after reading the next book, but so far I think I might like Beka even more than I liked Alanna. show less

I find it rather odd that Pierce deliberately linked Beka to George, since I thought the story was engrossing enough to stand on its own without a tenuous connection to an already beloved character from her earlier books.

The one thing that kept bothering me was that I found the portrayal of Beka's shyness as her weakness to be rather flimsy. It didn't quite mesh in my head with the 8 year old who ran into the street to grab the Lord Provost's horse. I probably wouldn't have noticed so much except that the story kept looping back to this one characteristic.

Despite that, I really did enjoy the story and the glimpse of life in Tortall before Alanna, and especially life outside of the nobility.

Last year, I ran across a short story collection of Tamora Pierce's in the library, and picked it up, under the idea that I liked her stuff, and particularly the Song of the Lioness quartet, when I was growing up, and I should give it another shot now. I ended up being fairly disappointed in the collection, but I thought some authors find the short story too constraining a format to really shine, so I made a mental note to come back and try something longer, and in particular the Provost's Dog trilogy, of which Terrier is the first, since I remember having seen it get some good press.

It turns out that this hypothesis was largely justified, since Terrier was much more enjoyable of a read. I think a lot of the fun of Pierce's books comes show more from the world-building aspects, and that's much easier to do with a few hundred pages to play with, building up your city and its cast of characters. Definitely that's the case in this story, set in the capital city of Pierce's oft-visited fantasy kingdom Tortall, Corus. There's a small frame story telling you of the time frame (a healthy number of generations before the Song of the Lioness books) and some of the setup for the main character, her skills and background, by giving you bits and pieces from a number of characters' diaries.

But then it settles into the diary and voice of Beka Cooper, a Puppy or trainee city guard, in the most hardnosed district of Corus. It's not the easiest place to live, but it's somewhere she's very familiar with, even after having spent a number of years with her siblings in the household of the Provost himself after helping crack a case when she was a young girl. She's wanted to be a Dog for a long, long time, and she's determined to find her way, even if it's lonely at first. But she's got some small degree of magic, and she's got the best guardsmen in the precinct as her mentors, so the road isn't too hard to see. Over the course of the story, she gets entangled in two mysteries, dealing with an influx of incredibly precious rare stones and abductions and murders among the poorest parts of the city.

The mysteries are actually pretty well presented and clever, but the prize of the writing is Beka's voice and the world-building. Pierce isn't the world's foremost prose stylist, but you do sink very solidly into Beka's world, between all the local argot that shows up in her speech and her particular view of how the world should be, and how she can best find her place in it. She's a talented young woman with drive and curiosity, but she's also realistically sensitive and real. You get a real sense of her and her life, and of the city she's in. Pierce populates the place with a wide variety of interesting characters, and makes Corus breath to their rhythms, from the Rogue's Court to the Dogs, Beka's friends on both sides of the law, the little shopkeepers and the nobility. Corus feels like a real city, and even if you don't see the nicer parts, you hear of them, alongside the hardships and the people working to keep their lives whole, staying away from slavery and poverty as best they can.

This is a different world from the Tortall of the Alanna series, a rougher and looser society, in need of lots of obvious reminders of how the place should be in order for the people of the capital city to be satisfied in life. Considering how well imagined the later chronological books dealing with Tortall are, this is no small feat, and it's an impressive feat. I'm glad to get back to the world of Pierce's novels, and I'm looking forward to seeing Beka's growth and the widening world in the next books. I'm definitely not going to go as long before I pick up her series again. show less

Beka Cooper, an ancestress of George from the Alanna series, is a Puppy in the Provost's Guard. She is assigned to Goodwin and Tunstall, two of the best Dogs in the Lower City, her former home, to track down criminals. Her magical gift allows her to hear rumors in dustspinners and the voices of the dead in pigeons' cooing.

Through these sources Beka learns of two crime waves happening throughout the Lower City that are not regulated by the weak man at the head of the court of the Rogue: the Shadow Snake, a monster from childhood stories, is kidnapping children for ransom and killing them if he is not paid; and diggers are mysteriously disappearing in a plot stemming from one of the city's most powerful fences.

Beka's forthright, no show more nonsense approach resembles Pierce's other heroines, but she brings a new wealth of conflicting motivations and human connections that add depth to her backstory and her character. Beka is probably the most introspective, isolated character yet, though she is slowly drawn out of her shell by her new friendships.

Beka has to balance her duty as a Dog against her friendships within the Lower City, and her desire to resolve crimes at her own pace. The Tortall of 200 years before Alanna is a violent place with a very different set of morals and code of honor. There is very little room to be haughty or high-minded in the midst of the squalor of the Lower City, and Pierce portrays the trade-offs made by the Dogs admirably.

A complex work with a satisfying ending - although the second sub-plot seemed a little rushed. I love Beka, her friends, and above all, Pounce (Faithful, anyone?) show less

I love reading Tamora Pierce. She has such a beautiful way of fabricating worlds and characters and plots that just leaves me submerged in it all.

Beka gives us another beautifully real heroine, one that is shy and magically inclined but is also stubborn and smart and so, so keen to do good and help others. Don't expect her to be perfect; expect her to capture your attention and keep it long after you've finished this book.

Only thing I didn't love about this book is the format. Not a huge fan of journal-entry-type-novels, but Pierce does a good job at making me forget even that.

Tamora Pierce comes through again with an engaging series set about two hundred years before Alanna comes along. It took me a little bit to get used to the language of the Dogs, the terminology, and how it all worked, but once I got there, I settled in nicely to this new world.

As always with Pierce's books, the character development is very well done and consistent, the plot pacing is steady, and storyline is masterfully crafted. I really liked that it was a little more adult than the Alanna series. It's kind of like a mystery series set in a world similar to Alanna's, and considering that young adult and mystery genres are my favorite and that the Alanna series is one of my favorite things to read, it was a winning combination for me.