The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce

[snugglekitty]

This is the conclusion to the Mages' Circle books. You know, there were four, and then there were four more, and they were all a hundred pages long or so?
Well, this is the last book, and it was more than five hundred pages long.

At first I thought this was a sequel to Trickster's Queen, because those are the only hardcovers I had seen her do before. But perhaps this is the beginning of an overall trend, her writing longer books. If so, I'm glad. The world deserves more, and longer, YA fantasy. So I liked the format. You could almost see the four books that it would have been, if she'd kept following her usual pattern, but I liked having them all together. It made things feel a bit less formulaic, since the previous eight were definitely all-of-a-kind. Unfortunately...

There comes a time in the life of every fantasy author when she stops being edited scrupulously. Mercedes Lackey passed that point with the Magewinds series, but happily, she's recovered since then. We have yet to see whether Ms. Pierce will do that. As in the Trickster books, there were a few plot points that were just not that probable, where people are acting out of character. I also thought that the beginning and the end were rushed.

Pierce seems, recently, to have a fascination with Imperial courts. That's okay. She's also getting more into intrigue and betrayal types of plots - where not everything is at it seems on the surface. I like that too.

Overall, I'd give it three stars. I liked it, but probably won't read it again.

Comments

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

She probably hasn't - it only came out a few months ago. Hope she likes it.

I thought it was good, I just tend to judge everything an author does in comparison with what I think is their best work, in this case, the Song of the Lionness, and I didn't think this was as good. Although it was better than the previous eight in the series, and how often do series improve as they go along? Not that often. :)

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's disappointing. I was looking forward to this, though you're right, I haven't enjoyed the Magic Circle series as much as the Tortall-based books.

But perhaps this is the beginning of an overall trend, her writing longer books.

I don't remember where, it may have been at WorldCon last year, but I recall her saying that ever since the Harry Potter phenomenon, she's realized that YA fantasy readers will sit still for longer books. (Don't ask me why she didn't realize this before. I know how long the books were that I was reading in 8th grade.) So, where she might have made Trickster's Choice & Trickster's Queen a quadrology like everything else she's done, she felt comfortable just putting them out as two books. I bet Will of the Empress is just a Pierce quadrology in a single book; did the pacing support that idea?

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

I bet Will of the Empress is just a Pierce quadrology in a single book; did the pacing support that idea? \

Kind of. You can still see four storylines, but they're all happening simultaneously, and they're tangled up in each other. So that's neat.

gay

[trouble4hire.livejournal.com]

So obviously I didn't read this review thoroughly when you first posted it, because I had been avoiding "Will of the Empress" because I thought it was the first in a series and I've been on that "i need the next book!" train before (thanks for nothing, Robert Jordan).
I was really interested in how she brought sex into the narrative. She had sex in the Lionness series, but the other series were much more typically YA asexual. I was very impressed with the introduction of the same-sex lovin', and confirmation of that in previous books in the series. I was glad that non-heterosexuality was discussed explicitly, because it seems like a cop-out when it's alluded to, or visible only if you have finely tuned gaydar.
Any thoughts on sex in YA? I think JK Rowling is through ever-increasing evil at Harry just so he'll be too busy to get busy.