In anticipation of Tamora Pierce’s newest book, Mastiff (out last month–I’m behind in my reviews!), I recently reread the first two books in her Beka Cooper trilogy.  You can see my review of Terrier for more background.  Today, my subject is Book Two, Bloodhound.

The second book is set about a year and a half after the first.  Beka has finished her training year and is a full-fledged (though junior) City Guard, or Dog as the slang has it.  Beka is taken out of the world she’s familiar with when she and her mentor, Goodwin, are sent to Port Caynn, another city in Tortall, to track a ring of counterfeiters.

It’s a solid and exciting plot; Pierce mentions somewhere in the acknowledgments that she was afraid counterfeiting wasn’t exciting enough, but I think she does very well with it.  The dangers of inflation seem abstract in the extreme, but she manages to make it very concrete.  There’s a riot when bread prices go up, and frequent concern about food shortages and starvation.  In other words, the threat feels real.

Going to a new city means a number of new characters, many of them excellent.  The villains are particularly fascinating, and I wish some of them had been given more screen time, so to speak.  There was also a transgender character, possibly the first I’ve seen in YA fantasy.  I like it that Pierce takes a contemporary social issue and puts it into a very different setting–but any message she’s making with the character is still very clear.  It’s a perfect example of fantasy’s ability to comment on the real world–and sometimes it actually has more impact when it’s in the different setting.

My favorite new character (who was technically introduced in the last book, but just barely) is Achoo, a scenthound Beka adds to her menagerie.  Achoo is a brilliant tracker–and she’s also just lovable and adorable.  One of my favorite moments in the book is when a completely ruthless villain does a total about-face and starts fawning over Achoo.

There are probably those who would say that their favorite new character is Dale, although I disagree.  Beka has a romantic fling with Dale, and while I suppose it’s well enough, I never could get into it as a romance.  Beka doesn’t know him very well, and she doesn’t trust him, which is a problem right there.  He’s a nice enough fellow, good-looking, and he likes to gamble, but we don’t know much else about him as a character.  The relationship moves fast, and I didn’t feel like Beka or I knew Dale well enough to be going where it went.  It’s not terrible–it’s just not a great romance either.

On the plus side, Beka does seem to be shedding most of the shyness that didn’t quite work for me in the first book.  By this one, she seems to be mostly just nervous about public speaking, and it felt like a much more plausible character trait.

All in all, despite a so-so romance, it’s a very good book.  There’s plenty of excitement and tension, and many characters who were adequately developed.  I’m looking forward to diving into the conclusion of the story!  Stay tuned for a review very soon.  🙂

Author’s Site: http://tamorapierce.com/

I recently reread Terrier by Tamora Pierce, in anticipation of the third book in her Beka Cooper series coming out (Terrier is the first).  As I generally expect from Tamora Pierce’s books 🙂 it’s an excellent story with a strong female lead and solid characters of both genders.

For those familiar with Pierce’s Tortall books, Terrier is set a few hundred years earlier than her usual time period.  George Cooper is a major character in Song of the Lioness and the Trickster books, and this series is about one of his ancestors.  George is the King of Thieves, but his ancestor was a…well, I suppose policewoman is the right word, though it sounds too modern.  She’s a member of the City Guard, who are a little rough around the edges but work to keep the peace in Corus, Tortall’s capital city.

Terrier is about Beka’s first six weeks or so as a City Guard, or a Dog as they’re known in the slang.  She starts out as a Puppy, assigned to two more experienced Dogs who mentor her.  Beka is from the poor Lower City, and that’s where she chooses to work too, among the people who are often forgotten.  She quickly latches on to two crimes to investigate–one involving a string of child-kidnappings and murders, another involving mysterious, magical rocks and mass-murderings of the men hired to mine them.

I love the plot of this.  Many of Pierce’s books cover a longer scope of time, and pick up more threads.  I love that too, but I also enjoy the focus of this one.  It’s essentially a weaving of two mysteries, while Beka learns the ropes of being a Dog, and grows in the process.  Some of the character growth, especially at the beginning, seemed a bit swift, but in some ways I did enjoy the compressed timeline that made things move faster.

There’s a good cast of supporting characters, from Beka’s mentor Dogs, Goodwin and Tunstall, to her friends, among the Dogs and among thieves at the Rogue’s court–the Rogue is a bit like a mob boss, who has a tacit understanding with the Dogs because he keeps order among the criminals (that’s also George’s job, a couple centuries later).  Even the villains are well-drawn characters.  And I must say, I loved Lady Sabine, another female knight.  This was long before Alanna, when girls were allowed to hold the job.

There’s also Pounce.  Pounce is Beka’s enigmatic black cat, who has purple eyes and sometimes talks.  You may remember how much I love Faithful, Alanna’s purple-eyed, talking black cat.  Definitely not a coincidence, and we get just a little more insight into Faithful/Pounce’s origins here.  Much as I love Faithful, though, I’m not sure Pounce gets developed to the same extent.  I enjoy him immensely, but I don’t think he has the same bond with Beka that he had with Alanna.

Beka, however, is another good heroine.  She has big dreams and goes after them, and she’s a strong female role model, as Pierce is so good at writing.  She’s grittier than some of Pierce’s heroines, with her Lower City background.  This is the most urban Tortall book I’ve read–I’m not sure there’s a plant in the whole novel.  Usually other books set in Corus are at the Royal Palace, and somehow I think there’s more open park around there.  Beka has magic, but a new kind–and a grittier one!  She can hear ghosts.  People left with unfinished business–often those murdered–will end up as ghosts, inhabiting pigeons.  Beka has learned to seek out these ghosts to get clues to crimes.  She also can hear voices captured by dust devils, which apparently hang out on certain corners.

I did have one problem with Beka’s character.  She’s supposed to be shy.  I’ve read this book twice now, and I just don’t quite believe the shyness.  I find it hard to accept that a girl who grew up in the rough Lower City, who wants to be a City Guard, and who can leap into a tavern brawl, baton swinging…can’t look a new acquaintance in the eye and answer a direct question.  Fear of public speaking, sure.  Fear of approaching strangers, inability to come up with quick replies to saucy comments, sure.  But Pierce takes it one too far, I think, and it just doesn’t ring true to me with the rest of her character.

But that’s one flaw in an otherwise very good book.

There’s far less shining lights and dramatic magic and epic swordfights in this book than in many of Pierce’s others.  This is more a pound-the-pavement, get into fist-fights kind of book.  In some ways it’s darker, although there have been monsters and murders in earlier series too.  And next to something like The Hunger Games, this is a cheerful book.  I like the realism of fighting to make a positive impact in a tough world, and the hopefulness that it really is possible to do that–and to make good friends, chase your dreams, and have some laughs along the way.

Author’s Site: http://tamorapierce.com/