Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce (audio)

Posted on November 9, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Ran straight (and somewhat by accident!) into a new-to-me series still in the Tortallan world, where we last left Alanna. This is the first in another quartet, The Immortals. We meet Daine when she applies for a job, giving her age (falsely) as fifteen: she wants to help transport and care for a herd of semi-wild ponies under the direction of horsemistress Onua. Daine is alone in the world after her family was killed by bandits, and following other traumatic events that we will have to wait to learn about. Onua quickly realizes that Daine has a way with ponies and with all animals that goes beyond skill or talent; but she does not have the Gift, the magic we learned about in the Lioness quartet. Instead, we eventually learn, Daine possesses wild magic. It is far more rare and less controllable by its user, but Daine will have much to offer those who befriend her.

And she is so befriended. With Onua, Daine travels from her homeland of Galla to Tortall and to the capital city Corus. I am familiar with Corus, but Daine is not: she is from a distant country with few people in it, and finds the city overwhelming. Moreover, she meets Sir Alanna of Trebond and Olau, the famous “lady knight,” and is starstruck – and confused to find this hero so approachable, with her calloused hands and all. It continues from there, as young Daine meets the queen, the king, and other dignitaries, and finds them all real and regular people with callouses! (I love this.) Onua becomes a great friend, and equally important is the mage Numair, who will begin training Daine in earnest in her wild magic. The young girl remains employed by Onua to help find and train ponies for the Queen’s Riders, a venture of Thayet’s and Alanna’s since we saw them last, and to assist young Riders in learning in how to care for their steeds. But she will also turn out to be integral to the safety of the kingdom of Tortall, because her connection with animals allows her access as well to the Immortals, including spidrens, stormwings, dragons, griffins, and more.

I am barely scratching the surface, because the lonely, orphaned Daine is involved not only in collecting many human friends and built family, but also all the animal ones of the world: she can talk to the creatures of land and sky, and once she gets there, the sea; as she learns more about her wild magic, she can speak to them in groups of her choosing or singly; she can heal them; and they are all inclined to love her. The relationships here are many, and complex enough to threaten to overwhelm a tender-hearted thirteen-year-old who’s already lost everyone she loved once.

I’m over the moon about this continuing installment in the Tortallan world, for all the reasons I loved that last series I read. I will say, though: where I expressed some hesitation about the racial characterizations in books past (about the desert tribes), here there are black and enslaved people, whose portrayals are not egregious, but are also not as sensitively written as I think we’d expect today. Most central is Sarge, a former slave, whose voice on my audio production is played to stereotype. Heads up on this issue. It’s not ruining things for me, but I’m sorry about it. (This book’s original publication date was 1992. I guess I’m not surprised.)

That said: I am looking forward to book 2.

Rating: 7 claws.

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Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce (audio)

Posted on November 2, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Book four in this quartet had me wondering how we were going to get all the loose threads tied up by its end, but we did get there! I am very appreciative of Pierce’s writing (and Trini Alvarado’s narration) throughout, and will miss Alanna. It looks like there are some other books related to the Tortallan world; I’ll see about tracking those down.

In Lioness Rampant, we see Alanna take on the biggest, baddest adventure yet – and perhaps her first proper quest, with a goal of international significance and not just that of improving her own reputation (although that remains important to Alanna, who as a “lady knight” must always be proving herself). She faces hazards out of all proportion, and will have to face old enemies again. We meet back up with every character who has mattered for the four books, including one we thought we’d killed off already, and introduce new heroes. Alanna continues to reckon with her choices and ask herself what it is she really wants out of life.

“I can only blame myself,” she growled. “I could have gone to a convent, never learned to wrestle and be dumped on my head, never have broken any bones or fallen in the dirt. I’d be clean and wear pretty dresses. By now I’d be married to a buffle-brained nobleman with a small fief. I’d probably even have clean, pretty, buffle-brained children.” Trying to wipe her hands before taking the reins, she found her breeches were as muddy as her hands. “Don’t remind me I picked this life. I have no one to blame but myself.”

I’m leaving this plot summary pretty loose: crazy odds, huge ambitions, epic battles, new and old heroes and foes. I am still mulling where we leave everyone in the end: Tortall’s future is more or less secured (to the extent possible) by Alanna’s heroism, and the good work of her comrades. But the hero herself… well. Reader responses will vary. I’m not sure how I feel about it all, but I am very glad that Pierce is making me think and feel all these things.

I would be so glad to keep reading in this world, or anything from this author.

Rating: 8 earbobs for the series.

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The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce (audio)

Posted on October 26, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Book three in a quartet that began here and is flying by. In The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Alanna has been newly knighted, and the world now knows that she is a woman. We find her traveling through the southern desert (because it is winter and she loathes the cold) with her faithful manservant and trainer, Corum, as her only company. She is in search of adventure, and also legitimacy in the eyes of a court that does not generally approve of women warriors. She finds the first, at least, with the Bazhir, a loose nation of desert folk, and the Bloody Hawk tribe within that people. There is a battle, she proves herself by combat, she is adopted by the tribe; but the existing shaman views her as an enemy, mostly for her gender. After she kills him in a fight she never wanted in the first place, she is tasked with becoming the Bloody Hawk’s shaman in his stead, until she can train a suitable replacement. (There are some interesting cultural questions here; I am more or less as surprised as Alanna that such an important role should go to an outsider.) Of course, the candidates to replace her turn out to be two girls, something that does not bother Alanna but gives the tribe some further trouble.

“I think I’m leaving you in a fairly quiet place,” [Corum] began as he unpacked in his tent. Alanna was watching as she scratched Faithful’s ears. “You weren’t well enough known here that you could get into any trouble, and I thought they’d stay away from ye. But I come back and you’re the mother-blessed shaman of the tribe! You’ve adopted three young ones and you’re forcin’ the women to accept two of their own sittin’ with the men!”

“You’re turning purple,” Alanna commented when he stopped for breath.

But as the Woman Who Rides Like a Man (so called by her new tribespeople, with respect and admiration), she is well placed to push for such a revolution.

In the course of her accomplishments with the Bloody Hawk, Alanna also enjoys a reunion with Prince Jonathan, and they renew their love affair. He asks her to marry him, and one day become his queen; but this will lead in a different direction than he hopes.

By this novel’s end, the prospects for the kingdom of Tortall are looking up, based upon Jonathan’s work with the Bloody Hawk, which is in turn made possible (I’d argue) by Alanna’s relationships. But Alanna’s personal life remains in some upheaval. She’s come a ways from the time when she told the goddess she would never love; in one of her quieter revolutions in what women can be, Alanna takes lovers as she pleases. But she hasn’t settled on what exactly it is that she wants. Luckily, we head into book four with another quest on the horizon.

These books were originally published in the 1980s and have aged remarkably well. I think there is room for some concern in the portrayal of the desert tribespeople, but it does not feel (at least to this reader) necessarily objectionable. I’d defer to a sensitivity reader, perhaps.

I do still love Alanna and her attitudes and adventures, and am looking forward to what the final book in the quartet may hold.

Rating: 7 swords.

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In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce (audio)

Posted on October 16, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Book 2 in the Song of the Lioness quartet continues to please. We know Alanna from the eponymous first book, where we left her mid-adventure. We meet her again still in-scene, though we’ve fast-forwarded; she is a competent and respected squire approaching the trial she must endure to become a knight. And she is dreading it, to an extent that feels a little inexplicable to this reader; she has been so good at everything she’s tried so far, although often as not that’s a feature of hard work. Alanna still lives as a boy, now a young man, with only a few close friends knowing her truth. This generally means she’s the smallest, and there is always some self-doubt.

One of the trajectories she goes through in this novel is her resistance to ‘love’ (or, as it sometimes seems, sex). It is also increasingly necessary that she live the truth of her identity. It’s never been a question that Alanna feels like a girl – she even wishes for a little more knowledge of how to wear women’s clothing and be ‘pretty.’ She poses as a boy for the privileges it provides her, to study the martial arts, and not as a matter of identity. So, one of the places we see her moving is toward declaring her true identity – but only after she achieves knighthood.

The other plot thread that provides tension is that of a threat to the throne, most pointedly in the form of its heir, Prince Jonathan, who is Alanna’s good friend and perhaps something more. The threat comes from inside the royal circle, and is magical as well as substantial; a supernatural weapon is used to obscure the truth, leaving Alanna mostly alone in fighting it. That storyline will come to a head alongside the question of where Alanna puts her breasts, as one friend forms that inquiry.

I still appreciate Trini Alvarado’s reading of these books, which is just a little clipped in a way that feels just right. (Maybe I’ll describe that better in book three.) It’s all a grand adventure, and I feel invested in the growth of our heroine, who very much rides into the sunrise at the book’s end. Even after these decades, she feels like a worthwhile hero, not at all dated. See you soon!

Rating: 7 phantom swords.

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Alanna by Tamora Pierce (audio)

Posted on September 28, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I’m certain I got this title off a recommendations list somewhere on the Shelf Awareness site, but that source appears lost to me now. It’s a book about as old as I am, but has not paled, nor does it feel especially dated. Trini Alvarado narrates this audio version, and I liked her style: a little unadorned, with a snappy pace, not lingering; but still with emotion in dialog.

Alanna is a twin of minor nobility, with no mother, and a distracted father. Her brother Thom (being a boy) is destined to go to the king’s court to train to become a knight – something he wants not at all. Alanna (being a girl) will be sent to a convent to study magic. Though powerful, she’s not crazy about that set of abilities; she’d rather study the fighting arts in Tom’s stead. And so it is Alanna’s idea to more or less switch places: they forge letters that send Thom to study magic, on his way to becoming a sorcerer, and invent his twin brother Alan, who will go to court to serve as page, then squire, then hopefully knight.

Accompanied by family servant and former soldier Coram (who is reluctant to help, but confesses that Alanna was always the more talented fighter, and anyway she threatens him with her magic), “Alan” does indeed go to court. The training is hard work, but her pride is helpful in the context of the chivalric code. She discovers quickly that it is important to take punishment without complaint. When she is bullied, she does not tattle, but trains harder until she can defeat her enemy on her own terms. Despite being the littlest, she overcomes obstacle after obstacle. She must eventually reveal her magic to save a friend’s life (especially because that friend is an heir to the throne); it is harder still to reveal her true identity as Alanna, but puberty comes for us all. I loved everything about this story of adventure and intrigue, and only found that it ended too soon, practically mid-escapade – but that only leaves me ready for the rest of what seems to be a fast-paced little series. Cheers to plucky girls!

Rating: 7 tankards of lemonade.

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Black Moon by Stephen Wright

Posted on August 31, 2026 by pagesofjulia

This fiercely imaginative, blood-soaked, starry-eyed, and exuberant epic based on the life of Irish pirate Anne Bonny will capture the dreams and nightmares of any daring reader.

Stephen Wright’s Black Moon is a wild romp of an adventure, lush with blood and debauchery, starring a spectacularly colorful character based on the historical figure of Anne Bonny. Readers will need a strong constitution for the violence and rape that populate these pages, but the heroine and her associates offer plenty of humor, thoughtful philosophy, and transcendence to balance the scales.

Not much is known about Anne Bonny, an Irishwoman turned pirate in the early 1700s. With this inspiration, Wright (Meditations in Green; M31: A Family Romance) invents Amethyst “Meeks” Connell. From early trauma to an orphanage, then a “sewing shop for recalcitrant maids” and a youthful marriage into the minor gentry, Meeks continually reaches to improve her circumstances. When her devoted husband, Georgie, lusts after the latest round of developing war between the major European powers, Meeks plays along. “In a short amount of time she [becomes] considerably adept at fencing,” followed by other forms of combat–it is a feature of Meeks’s character that she is good at most anything she puts her mind to. Georgie decides he must join the war himself and secures himself a commission, and Meeks accompanies him. Within minutes of reaching the battlefield, Meeks makes her first kill and is widowed.

Wright’s swashbuckling, stylish narrative unfolds perfectly naturally as Meeks lives as a soldier and a man (with a short haircut, she simply fails to correct the assumptions of her fellows); marries a woman and is widowed again; and, on the lam, sets sail for Ireland and home. When her ship is boarded by pirates, no reader will be surprised that she joins them. It is at this point that Meeks’s real adventures–and the shining love(s) of her life–begin.

Meeks loves the sky over the ocean at morning, which she judges “the ultimate source of all value.” She loves the lifestyle, the freedom, the riches, the violence, and the friends she makes. At sea, she lives as a woman again; vehement misogyny is common among sailors and pirates, but there are those who honor her skills. The pirate life is for “those who can work like miners, fight like demons, and revel like tosspots,” and Meeks keeps up with the best of them. “There remains, of course, the lingering issue of love.” Black Moon, however bloodthirsty, is also a romantic novel: spirited, atmospheric, raging, and joyful unto its unforgettable end.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the August 13, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 fingers.

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Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C. B. Lee

Posted on October 31, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I think this is my favorite of the remix series. Clash of Steel follows Treasure Island perhaps a bit less closely than some, but the broad strokes are there. I love the way that C. B. Lee has adopted their own personal history, and really substantive research into world history, to reset Stevenson’s classic tale of adventure, pirates, hidden treasure, family, loyalty and betrayal (etc.) in the South China Sea in piracy’s golden age. In this process, they offer protagonists who are girls and women, queer, and Chinese and Vietnamese. None of this is cut to fit Stevenson’s story; it’s a riff, set to history, in a time and place where it fits naturally. I loved the whole story. I also loved the supplemental materials at the back of the book, but let’s go in order.

We begin with a prologue set in 1818 South China Sea in which we meet an eight-year-old girl named Anh, aboard a small fishing vessel with her mother (the captain), her little brother, and a small crew. We get a glimpse of dangers at sea, a tight-knit family group, a daring young girl, and an interest in tales of hidden pirates’ treasures. Then we fast-forward to 1826, a small village in China’s Guangdong province. Sixteen-year-old Xiang has never left her village, not for lack of desire. Her father is long dead at sea; her mother is a successful salt merchant and proprietor of several teahouses, including the one where Xiang lives in this backwater, locked away, kept ‘safe’ but unhappy. She dwells in the stories she reads of travel and adventure, and on the high point from where she can view the city of Canton, and dream.

An opportunity comes when she convinces her mother to take her to the city, to visit the larger teahouse there, to see the commercial center–Mother wishes to marry her off to a young man from an appropriate family, but Xiang intends to show enough prowess that she might be permitted to run the teahouse someday. She has always yearned for her mother’s approval, which has never come. If only she could prove herself worthy, she might win that approbation as well as a chance to have a wider life than the village can ever afford. In her brief hours in the city, she meets a magnetic girl her own age–Anh–and gets a snatch of an idea of the kind of life that might be possible: adventure, gumption, authenticity, more. Then a series of events forces her hand. Faced with being shipped peremptorily back to the village forevermore, Xiang takes a chance and runs away. See Xiang on a fishing ship that is also a trade vessel that is also a smuggling ship; see her learn to sail and fend for herself; see her forming closer relationships than she’s ever had before. For a time, it seems all sorts of things might be within reach: family, love, riches, independence. Or violent death and the end of everything she thought she knew about her own background.

Xiang’s story calls on Lee’s own history (descended from Vietnamese refugees of the fall of Saigon, with Chinese roots “tangled together in past generations in conflict and trauma,” and yes, with pirates appearing in that story as well) and the documented history of Zheng Yi Sao, a “pirate queen” who commanded over 70,000 pirates and over 1,200 vessels. I was so pleased by not only the author’s note and acknowledgments, but also language notes, pronunciation guide, and extended historical notes. Finally, we were gifted with an alternate prologue, which (I agree with Lee’s editor) would have revealed too much of the plot if it had appeared at the beginning of the book; but coming where it did, offers intriguing character insight. I wonder if it might have made sense as a sort of flashback late in the story. At any rate, all this extra material enriched my experience of this story, and I loved having the extended historical notes in particular, because I knew nothing of this era of world history in which a Chinese and Vietnamese empire of pirates controlled the South China Sea and subdued all Chinese, British, and Portuguese naval efforts. Thrilling! Oh, and the normalcy of same-sex relationships in this time and place setting, which was apparently disrupted only by Western influence during the Qing dynasty. These references to history make the imaginative adventure tale all the more engaging, at least for this reader.

This story was captivating, and I loved having enough background to appreciate it on several levels. I’ll be looking out for C. B. Lee and am definitely in for more remixed classics.

Rating: 8 baos.

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Even the Darkest Stars by Heather Fawcett

Posted on April 28, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I just went ahead and followed Ember and the Ice Dragons with another Fawcett book for younger readers. This one is a bit darker than that; I see that Ember is catagorized as middle-grade where this one is young adult, for what that’s worth.

Even the Darkest Stars is set in a magical-world version of the Himalayas, with yaks and butter tea and very high, very cold mountain climbing. But a parallel world to our own, in which an emperor rules over a huge region, keeping everyone safe from the witches of a bygone time. Our protagonist is Kamzin, a teenaged girl in the village of Azmiri, which is far from the emperor’s Three Cities. Her father is the village Elder; her mother was a great explorer in service to the emperor, but she’s been dead for years. Her older sister Lusha will be the next Elder. She studies astrology. As the younger daughter, Kamzin’s fate is to be the village’s next shaman. She is apprenticed to the current shaman, but is a poor student. Instead, Kamzin has always felt a strong pull to travel, to climb, to run, to map, to explore. When the emperor’s Royal Explorer, the famous River Shara, comes to the backwater of Azmiri, Kamzin knows she must stop at nothing to become a part of whatever has brought him here.

And after some brief intrigue and machinations, we wind up with a race. Lusha, the obnoxious older sister, takes to the road with one of River’s own retinue, aiming to beat the Royal Explorer himself to the top of Raksha – the highest mountain in the world, never climbed by a human, which defeated even Kamzin and Lusha’s late mother. Kamzin succeeds in joining up with the great River Shara, a handsome young man – younger than she’d expected – whom she finds bewitching. Also in their small party is Kamzin’s best friend, Tem, a far more accomplished (though untrained) shaman. And a stowaway: Kamzin’s familiar is a fox (or foxlike critter) named Ragtooth. They share a close bond but also he is apt to bite her. Oh and there are dragons: they are more tangential here than in the last book, but your standard ‘house dragon’ will eat just about anything remotely edible and in response, their bellies put out light. So an alternative to a lantern is to feed your scraps to a dragon. Part pet, part appliance, sometimes a nuisance. It’s quite fun. There’s a lot that is fun in this imaginative world… but also, Kamzin’s world and everyone she loves is in grave danger. It takes a while for the true nature of River’s quest to Raksha to be revealed, but once it is, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

This is a compelling story, populated by mystery, magic, fun creatures, breathtaking landscapes, true friendship, the germ of romance, and a tortured coming-of-age made harder by the possible end of the world. There is also great adventure, death-defying climbs, races for fun and for life-or-death… bit of a Princess Bride list there. My favorite part is that it ends with a clear nod to a sequel, which I’ll have my hands on in a day or so. But yes, also darker than Ember. More bad things happen here, and more is at stake. I may not hand it off to the thirteen-year-old yet. But I am so in for book two.

Rating: 7 sour apples.

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The West Passage by Jared Pechaček

Posted on June 7, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Wildly imaginative world-building, a spellbinding plot, and profoundly weird characters make this fantasy debut a memorable adventure.

The West Passage by Jared Pechaček introduces a marvelously strange cast of characters struggling against outsized forces in a world both reminiscent of medieval Europe and unlike anything readers will recognize.

Pechaček’s teenaged protagonists are Pell, an apprentice to the Mother of Grey, and Kew, apprentice to the Guardian. One has trained in stories, songs, history, and rituals for births and deaths, the other in protection from the Beast. They live in Grey House, one of the five towers in an enormous palace that can take days to cross. Gargantuan, monstrous Ladies rule over the looming, decaying towers. The Ladies and their roles have changed and shifted slowly over many eras, their origins almost beyond all memory. Upon the deaths of the Mother and the Guardian, both Pell and Kew are thrust into positions they aren’t quite prepared for. Before the Beast rises again, for the first time in an era or more, they must each quest beyond Grey to save the world they know.

Kew departs first, striding fearfully with his books and little else down the West Passage. In just the early pages of his adventure, he meets a sort of trout-person and a creature with rabbit ears, battles with jackals, and rides in a lantern that moves to a whistle. Pell encounters apes and a crazed tutor, befriends a Butler Itinerant riding a hollowman, and collects an unlikely stowaway. Genders are changeable, and Ladies as well as wheelbarrows can hatch from eggs. Political machinations dating back to the “time of songs” are still at work in ways difficult for these protagonists to comprehend. “Was there no transfer of power that did not involve destroying the old? It seemed now that everything he knew about the palace’s history was the merest thread in a tapestry bigger than his mind could encompass.”

Pechaček provides detailed descriptions of otherworldly creatures: “Three corresponding shoulders sprouted beneath them, leading to three arms, though one was severed just above the elbow and capped with chased gold. The parts of her that were not talon-like were the same glassy material as her hands.” The effect is often disorienting but always fascinating, and despite extreme variations from the “real” world, questions about power structures and agency remain relevant. Pell and Kew have been brought up to uphold tradition and ritual, but to save the world, they must grapple with the possibility of change, and of choice.

The West Passage is an absorbing tale of political intrigue, touching comings-of-age, and a mind-bending phantasmagoria.

This review originally ran in the May 3, 2024 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 leaves.

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The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Posted on May 13, 2024 by pagesofjulia

“There was a brief lull in the general chatter when the bandit walked into the coffeehouse.” It was not because he was a bandit; this was fairly commonplace. It was because he was extremely attractive. Nevertheless, chatter eventually recommences, until a fight breaks out – waitress, belligerent customer, manager, the beautiful bandit, and then a homelier bandit #2 – smashing the place to bits. It’s an appropriately exciting first chapter, setting up a cast of characters that we will follow well beyond the bounds of the coffeehouse. In fact, the majority of this short, lively book is set in the jungles and on the roads of a kingdom in turmoil.

The waitress is quickly recognized by her shaved head as a nun in the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. She is clever, resourceful, quick-witted, and highly trained in combat, but also a bit innocent. She follows our bandits (who are lucky no one noticed they appeared on a Wanted poster in the coffeehouse) and part-forces, part-cajoles her way into their gang, otherwise all male; the men are variously intrigued by the idea of a woman cooking for them (she turns out to be a terrible cook) or being available for sex (she sweetly informs them she would have to castrate them afterwards), or annoyed by her presence. Her devotion to the goddess she serves is very strong. As our nun-waitress-bandit and the rest of the gang get to know each other and pursue their banditry, conflicts arise in their approaches to religious fervor, history, and interpersonal relations, but they will find common cause.

At just 158 pages, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water was easy to devour in an evening. It combines playful humor with very real tragedy, political messiness, the truest of friendships and the beginnings of romance. It’s a swashbuckling series of escapades with ideologies, justice, religion, relationship issues, and more. With some twists on gender and sexuality, this thrilling, silly-yet-earnest adventure tale is definitely a readalike for Upright Women Wanted, although it feels a bit more fully realized in its small package. Absolutely recommended, and I’ll take more from Cho.

Rating: 7 jade prayer beads.

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