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It's About Girls Kicking Butt: A Tamora Pierce Fandom Overview
Five thousand words and more time than I thought this would take later, and the overview is done.
(Unbeta'd, though, so I'll be editing it for a while yet.)
The whole huge thing that is the overview is below the cut.
Also, huge mega mondo spoilers for absolutely every word Tamora Pierce has ever set to paper.
***
Unfortunately, I realized it was December before I got the chance to properly re-read anything past Lioness Rampant, so I would be much obliged if y'all excuse the truncated overview of Immortals, Protector of the Small, Trickster's and
Many people know Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe as "oh! those books I read when I was twelve! I can't believe you read them, too!" At least, they are for a bunch of people I've met in fandom outside of Tortall Fadom Proper.
Similarly, a bunch of people I've met within Tortall Fandom Proper know her Emelan universe as "Those books that dissapointed me by not being Tortall."
Tortall: The Universe
Tortall is a universe rich in the grand tradition of handwaving. It's first incarnation - since lost to scissors and paste - was as Alanna: The Big Book For Adults, physically disassembled and reworked into the Song of the Lioness Quartet for teens.
Society is quasi-medieval in Alanna's books and, as of Trickster's Queen,growing steadily toward postmodern utopia in the middle of an enlightenment-minded, Lockeian Renaissance.
There is magic. There are gods who take an active role in the lives of their worshippers. And their non-worshippers (see: Aly and Kyprioth. Also, Kyprioth generally).
There is magic in the form of multicolored glowyness. This glowy magic is called the Gift, and it is incredibly versatile. You can perform the equivilant of open-heart surgery with the Gift. You can create a nice, large, flat, fertile area out of a rocky mountainous valley for building stuff on and farming with the Gift. You can blind somebody with a strong light or call up really awesome illusions, even duplicate your own shiny self in magic (more on that later this month, I promise).
Duke Gareth the Elder's Gift is pink, I kid you not.
There's also the Sight, which is pretty much a magical lie-detector slash telescope slash infra-red-x-ray-night-vision goggles and stuff. If it's really strong. If it's not really strong, you can do less stuff with it. George has the Sight, as do his daugher Aly and ancestor Beka.
Tortall as magical creatures - dragons and flesh-eating flying horses and big metal birds that poo and otherwise disrespect battlefields and giants and centaurs and ogres and such - as well as an extremely active pantheon. Tortall's gods? Tortall's gods make the Greek gods look disinterested.
And so without further adieu --
Alanna (/Alan) of Trebond, The Lioness
The "girl pretends to be a boy so she can become a knight" story.
At ten, Alanna is hopeless at the feminine arts, due in large part to having had little to no training in said arts at all. And her brother is just as hopeless at fighting. So they switch places since they look practically identical, Alanna taking Thom's place in page-training at the palace and Thom taking Alanna's place at the northern convent school for girls and mages. (Alanna is afraid of her magic; Thom revels in his.)
At the palace, Alanna meets her posse, saves the prince's life, becomes friends with the King of the Rogue, gets herself a supernatural sword, cat and guide and later has adventures. She defeats evil demons, evil Duke Roger (twice! it's complicated.), an evil pseudo-arab sorcerer and a comes to a compromise with a non-evil abominable snowman. Along the way she comes to terms with herself, her magic and her place in the world.
Also, she kicks butt while doing it. (That's what Tortall is, in Tamora Pierce's own words -- a series of stories about girls kicking butt.)
Her Posse:
Thom of Trebond, Alanna's twin brother. He switches places with her and goes to the City of the Gods to study magecraft while Alanna goes to the palace at Corus to learn knightly stuff.
Maude, her and Thom's nurse. She's a seer, and she helps the twins pull off their switch.
Coram Smythesson, Alanna's manservant and first teacher in the fighting arts.
Prince Jonathan, Alanna's buddy, later knight-master, later lover, later ex, later king. They fight desert-demons together at right before he finds out she's a girl and asks her to be his squire. Also, Jon can be an ass, especially when he doesn't get his way. He spends most of Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess and Lioness Rampant thinking Duke Roger is just super.
George Cooper, King of the Rogue. The first person Alanna really notices on her arrival in Tortall, George becomes her friend, teacher in fighting dirty and eventual husband.
Eleni Cooper, George's mom and Alanna's teacher in All Things Womanly.
Sir Myles of Olau, Alanna's teacher and adoptive father.
Gareth the Elder of Naxen, Alanna's training master, later fencing tutor.
Gareth the Younger of Naxen, Alanna's page-sponser and buddy.
Raoul of Goldenlake, Alanna's buddy.
Francis of Nond, Raoul's "small, blond shadow". He dies. That happens a lot, actually, the dying of minor characters thing.
Liam Ironarm, who has color-change eyes and fears magic. But that doesn't stop him from sleeping with Alanna anyway. Also, he's totally a martial-arts superstar ninja.
Thayet jian Wilima, exiled princess of Sarain and Alanna's buddy. She marries Jon and becomes both queen and the object of much ire from the militant Alanna/Jon shippers. Thayet founds the Queen's Riders and one time charged off into battle in a pink tissue evening gown.
Buriram Tourakom, Thayet's bodyguard and eventual commander of the Queen's Riders. She thinks Alanna & Co are kinda sketchy when she first meets them.
Her Opponents:
Lord Alan of Trebond (stora). Lord Alan wants Alanna to be a lady and Thom to be a knight. Boo, boo!
Ralon of Malven, schoolyard bully. Later on he tries to take George's place as King of the Rogue.
Duke Roger of Conte, Jon's cousin. He's a big bad evil sorcerer who's bent on finding out Alanna's secret and causing her as much discomfort as possible in the process. Also, he tries to steal the throne. Alanna kills him. Twice. Some folk just don't learn. Pretty much everyone spends the first two books thinking he's just super.
Alexander (Alex) of Tirragen, Alanna's friend until he becomes Roger'ssnugglebunny squire. Alex is wicked good with numbers and swords, and goes a little whacko when Alanna gets as good at fencing as he is. So he tries to kill her in a private fencing match, mano-a-girl-pretending-to-be-a-mano. Myles intervenes and stops the attempted murder, and Alex goes back to mope at Roger.
Delia of Eldorne, a beautiful lady who gets into Jon's pants, makes Alanna jealous, gets into Roger's pants after Jon dumps her for Alanna and ultimately winds up imprisoned for the rest of her natural life.
Princess Josiane (Rittevon) of the Copper Islands. She was in Jon's pants for a while, then in Roger's plotting, and finally went crazy and started trying to kill people with a battle-axe.
Jem Tanner/Prince Jemis, who irritates Alanna during the Tusaine War and eventually is party to her kidnapping. Also, big surprise, he's in with Roger.
The Ysandir, who are the desert demons Alanna and Jon fight in the desert.
Ahknan Ibn Nazzir, mage of the Bloody Hawk tribe. He's jealous of Alanna's Elite Magical Skills and under the spell of a weird magical (evil) crystal sword that - you guessed it - came staight out of Roger's workshop.
Other Notables:
The Great Mother Goddess, Alanna's supernatural patron.
Faithful, Alanna's supernatural talking cat.
Chitral, the abominable snowmanlike keeper of the Dominion Jewel. Alanna beats him by ... giving up and letting him win.
Veralidaine (Daine) Sarrasri, The Wildmage
Right, so, Veralidaine Sarrasri is a demigod, and she has talking animal friends, and really strong magic and a really hot love interest and ---
WAIT, DON'T RUN AWAY.
Daine starts her quartet thinking she's insane, and her issues are mostly with getting inside her own head and coming to grips with herself as a person who is not crazy and who can show her face in public. She also starts out with a lot of shame about her supposed crazyness (she ran feral for a while after her mom and grandpa died) and about her being a bastard, because the folk in Galla where she's from are way more backward than the Tortallans about kids out of wedlock.
Also, she thinks seeing the badger god, who Weiryn assigned as her guardian, is a sign of her crazyness. Which it isn't. But no one told her this beforehand. Oops.
Numair, who she finds in hawk-form, injured and ill himself, eventually helps her get a grip on her magic and from there, how to heal animals and shapeshift. Because Numair is the world's foremost expert on Wild Magic, which is the kind of magic she has.
She spends the rest of the quartet after about the third quarter of Wild Magic kicking ass and taking names, and dying and coming back to life.I guess she's the Daniel Jackson of the Tortallverse like that.
Animals get smarter from hanging out around Daine. More humanlike. This remains something of a moral delimma for her right through to canon present.
Her Posse:
Cloud, her talking pony.
Onua Chamtong, who buys ponies for the Queen's Riders and gives Daine a job and a ride out of Galla.
Numair, her teacher and friend, later lover, later (oh god he finally talked her into it) husband. He's a really, really powerful mage and a bit scatterbrained and ultimately a good guy all around. Often he threatens to kill Daine himself if she keeps making him sick with worry -- with no intent to actually go through with it, and such moments are quite funny in-text.
Mira [whose does not have a last name but that does not stop fandom from deciding that it is "Fisher" because fishing is what her family does], Daine's friend and a Queen's Rider.
Evin Larse, a former player, Daine's friend and eventually Buri's successor as Commander of the Queen's Riders.
Rikash Moonsword, a sneaky stormwing who befriends Daine (eventually) and tricks Ozorne into stormwingifing himself. Stormwings are part man, part metal bird, and roll around in their own poo on battlefields to defile them. Nonetheless, Rikash is cool. He dies in Realms of the Gods, and Daine and Numair name their son after him in Trickster's Queen.
Skysong "Kitten" the dragon, who attaches herself to Daine in Wild Magic.
Maura of Dunlath, who is ten years old at the time of helping save the day in Wolfspeaker, and is slated for her own book sometime in the future.
Tkaa, a basilisk who is pretty much just around to be cool. That and he's a big prissy lizard with a language-kink.
The Longlake Wolf Pack, who help Daine save the day in the second book and are pretty much around to be cool. A whole bunch of the characters in The Immortals are around for the express purpose of being cool.
Kaddar Iliniat, who has a bunch of titles but is ultimately Ozorne's heir apparent, which means he was effectively slated to die at the beginning of Emperor Mage. That is, until Ozorne went and turned himself into a stormwing. He succeeds as Emperor and Marries Kalasin of Conte.
Lindhall Reed, who is more Numair's posse than Daine's, but still. Lindhall is Numair's old teacher and he and Daine take to one another right away.
The Darkings (Leaf, Jelly and Goldstreak), who are blobby creatures that Ozorne made of his blood after he became a stormwing. They spied on Our Heroes before turning on Ozorne and becoming Realms of the God's commic relief.
Her Opponents:
Zahneh Bitterclaws, who is the Little Bad in Wild Magic. She's a stormwing.
Lady Yolane of Dunlath, who is plotting something ultimately inconsequensial in Wolfspeaker and serves as that books Little Bad.
Tristan Staghorn, Numair's old school buddy who's in deep with Ozorne and who's in bed, figuratively as well as literally, with Yolane in Wolfspeaker.
Ozorne, Who wants Numair dead and later tries to sell out the universe to the Goddess of Chaos. Ozorne is both Emperor Mage's and the quartet's Big Bad.
Varice Kingsford, who is Numair's old flame and pretty obviously written specifically for the audience to revile, although I really, really like her.
Various sundry evil immortals working for Ozorne or just plain nasty by nature.
Other Notables:
The Badger God, Daine's magical snarky divine patron.
Weiryn, god of the hunt in Galla, Daine's dad.
Sarra, goddess of childbirth in Daine's hometown, whom Weiryn helped become a god when she died. Daine and Numair name their daughter after her in Trickster's Choice.
Keladry (Kel) of Mindelan, Protector of the Small
Keladry of Mindelan is the daughter of diplomats assigned the the court in Yaman, which serve as Tortall's Japan-analogue. Kel grew up being something of an outcast, and picked up Yamani hyper-politeness as well as some elite fighting skill while she was over there (age 4-10). Then she ships back to Tortall with her parents, rescues some kittens and goes off to become a knight so she can be a hero like her mom, who had once saved some priceless Yamani artifacts from pirates while Kel tagged along and hid behind her kimono. (Kel was little at the time.)
Nobody wants Kel to be a knight at first, and the other pages totally mess with her: turning her room upside down and peeing outside her door and generally being obnoxious ten-to-fourteen-year-old-boys who don't know how do deal with girls yet. The exception is Nealan of Queenscove, who is sixteen by a first-year page because his brothers just died in the Immortals War and he had to become a knight because of his own weird sense of honor.
Kel spends her training working really hard to unlearn all the stuff she learned in Yaman and fighting bullies and fighting hazing and fighting immortals and hill bandits and coming into her own as the kind of person who was born for command. Raoul of Goldenlake takes her own as a squire (Alanna takes Neal and fills in the parts of his healer's education he gave up for knighthood) and while Kel was sad that Alanna didn't take her at first, she's ultimately in a really good spot with Raoul, whose sense of humor bests Alanna's any day of the week.
Also, she acquires a small zoo of her very own without even trying.
As a squire, Kelmagically gets a bunch of people to hook up with one another at her power of suggestion kicks ass and takes names. She acquires some more pets, including a baby griffin that makes her life miserable for a few months, and eventually goes home to his parents.
Kel passes her Ordeal, becomes the first known female knight and goes on to command a refugee camp for the displaced of the Scanran War and to collect strays.
Her Posse:
... I know this is a copout, but really. Most everyone Kel runs into who doesn't openly oppose her is part of her posse. :\
Her Opponents:
Joren of Stone Mountain and Crew, Kel's assigned schoolyard bullies. Joren has her maid and her dog kidnapped and dies in his Ordeal.
Blayce the Nothing Man, the second books' Big Bad, Blayce imprisons the souls of children for fun.
Various and sundry conservatives who dislike Kel just 'cause she's a girl.
Other Notables:
Lord Wyldon, Kel's page training master. He's a conservative and he doesn't believe Kel's capable til she proves it to him, and then he respects her. He has quite a following in fandom, actually.
The Chamber of the Ordeal, Kel's supernaturalcruise-director ... guide-thingie. That is, the Chamber gives her her Job in Lady Knight and keeps at her until she completes it.
The Mysterious Benefactor, who sends her cool, expensive stuff. Benefactor? Turns out to be Alanna.
Alianne (Aly) of Pirate's Swoop, The Daughter of the Lioness
Right, so, Aly's books were my least favorite of ... all that Pierce has written.
Pretty much they go as follows --
Aly fights with Alanna about having died her hair blue.
Aly runs away.
Gets kidnapped by pirates.
And sold into slavery.
But her new masters are good people! They would never abuse her! Which means all the legitimate worry about potentially being raped she had earlier was for nothing.
She talks to the trickster god, Kyprioth, and makes a deal: keep her masters' two daughters alive for the summer and he'll send her home.
So, after Aly has adventures with a crowman, herding goats, eavesdropping and wearing blackface, she foils some assassins and decides to stay in the Copper Islands anyway.
And that's Trickster's Choice.
Trickster's Queen is a lot more convoluted.
Pretty much it ends with the Pretty Populer Older Sister running off to Carthak to get married and the Bookish Younger Sister becomign queen. Also, Aly pwning some really pathetic enemies, channeling Pratchett's DEATH, uses terrorist tactics to get rid of this week's batch of slave traders by blowing up the docks*, Nawat turning Mysteriously into A Manly Man Grr and deciding to live happily ever after as the Copper Islands' Spymistress.
Also, she has triplets.
*Disclaimer: I'm a homeland security & emergency preparedness major. I cannot stand seeing stunts like Aly pulls lauded, which yeah, her stunt with the slave docks was pretty much lauded with its handling in the text. YMMV.
Rebakah (Beka) Cooper, The Provost's Dog
She fights crime! Sort of. Beka is a Puppy, a trainee on the Provost's Guard some 200 years before Alanna: the First Adventure is set.
Beka's story is a lot about learning to deal with talking to authority figures (she is not terminally shy, not matter what she and the back jacket and Pierce herself may say), and getting knocked down a peg (thrown in a barrel of fish) and building herself back up in her own eyes.
She'd needed to be knocked down a peg because, I kid you not, she dogged the worst ganglord in the city and brought him to justice ... when she was eight years old. Yeah. I had the same look on my face on that happening as y'all probably do now. But still! She does get knocked down a peg, which is the important thing. And she earns her eliteness back in the eyes of the other characters and in the eyes of the readers.
Beka is the same kind of cop as due South's Benton Fraser, in case that's helpful for anyone. She jumps out of several-story windows and runs bad guys all over town, and she will not let a case go.
And so the action plot of the book is Beka solving the unsolvable case. Which she solves. Just in the nick of time, in the spirit of procedural dramas everywhere.
Her Posse:
Gaurdswoman Clara (Clary) Goodwin, Beka's trainer/partner, she is one of the best cops in Corus. She does not put up with BS and she does not put up with BS from Beka, and Goodwin? Didn't want a damn puppy in the first place, but she learns to respect Beka once Beka shows her stuff.
Guardsman Mathias (Mattes) Tunstall -- Beka's other trainer/partner, who has a way better sense of humor than Goodwin does. Also, he's a great big flirt.
Lady Knight Sabine of Macayhill -- She shows up pretty much just to have a Lady Knight in the book and winds up hooking up with Tunstall.
Ersken Westover, Beka's friend and fellow puppy.
Verenne - Beka's friend. She dies, unfortunately, because she's cool. Her dying was the most emotionally wrenching part of the book, and I fully admit to crying when it rolled around.
Rosto the Piper, who is a thief from Scanra, moves into Beka's building, flirts with her and ultimately becomes king of the rogue. He has a skull earring.
Kora Igensra, Rosto's ... friend...thing. She befriends Beka. Stops sleeping with Rosto and starts sleeping with Ersken. It's complicated, except that it's not really that complicated. The complicated part is how everyone stays friends.
Aniki Forfyrsning, Rosto's ... friend...thing. I think? Mostly, she's awesome with a sword. Aniki and Kora both
Tansy Lofts, Beka's childhood friend and Crookshank's granddaughter-in-law. She recently had her son killed because Crookshank was a cheap bastard. She's deep in mourning throughout all of the books, swinging from almost okay to extremely depressed to hysterical, and overall is one of the most believable characters in the book.
Mother Cantwell, who is really ancient and who acts as an informant for Beka in exchange for some money.
Her Opponents:
The Shadowsnake, who has been kidnapping and killing children in the Lower City for a long while. The Shadowsnake turns out to be Mistress Noll, who has been feeding Our Heroes pastries all book long.
Yates Noll, who is Mistress Noll's son and a great big ass of a thug.
Ammun Lofts (Crookshank), the scroogelike landlord and owner of, well, pretty much the whole Lower City. Or so much of it that it seems like it. Tansy's grandfather-in-law. He's so damn cheap he won't pay his own great-grandson's ransom to the Shadowsnake.
Other Notables:
Pounce, Beka's supernatural talking cat. (Yes, the same supernatural talking cat that adopted Alanna.)
The three kids whose mother Beka arrested early on in the book. They make nuisances of themselves throughout, and eventually their father disappears and Beka takes them in because she's a really, really good person.
The Dustspinners, magical spinny mini-tornadoes, which Beka stands in and gets visions from. She feeds them new dirt (literally!) and that makes them happy.
Beka's magical flock of pigeons with funky names, who harass Beka and whose ghosts harass her too.
Emelan: The Univere
Emelan as a universe is set up in a much more orderly fashion than Tortall; where Tortall is seat-of-your-pantsed, Emelan is planned.
It's magic is twofold - academic magic is common, and used for lots of stuff and easy to find. Ambient magic is tougher to find because people who use it draw magic from their crafts.
The pieces of the world are based on places from the real world: Yang Jing on China, Thanatos on republican Athens, et cetera. They follow, effectively, the rules of those places as far as culture goes.
The religion, that we see most of is the Winding Circle Religion, which is sort of zen buddhism on speed and with a bunch of magic to make it sparkly and some really great funding. There are other religions that we don't see much of, but they exist, and the thing is: there's no evidence within the world that any gods exist, which is excellent. (In Tortall the gods are obviously real becaue they show up and meddle.)
Although Emelan is not my area of expertise, so I'll cut off my overview before I get something wrong.
Circle of Magic, in which the kids learn how to use and control their magic and not drive one another absolutely insane.
The Circle Opens, in which the kids take on students of their own and learn how to function apart from their foster-siblings. Also, they fight crime.
Will of the Empress, in which the kids learn to function together again, as adults and separate individuals. Also, Daja is a lesbian and Briar is a man-whore.
Melting Stones, which I have not yet gotten to listen to. But it has Rosethorn and Evvy and a magical talking rock, so it can't be all that bad.
Lady Sandraline (Sandry) fa Toren
Sandry spent a bunch of time in a closet in the dark during the smallpox epidemic that took her parents and her nurse befor Niko tracked her down and brought her to Winding Circle. She's a noble, but she sticks up for the little folk, which made her an outcast among her fellow nobles and got her sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Briar Moss
Briar's a theif and an orphan. Niko tracked him down, too, in a jail in chammur just as he was about to be sent to long-term punishment, and bailed him out. Crane caught him eyeballing an expensive bonsai tree which made Crane angry and suspicious and got him sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Daja Kisubo
Niko rescued Daja, a Trader, from the wreckage of her sunken ship. The other traders labled her terminally unlucky and banished her from among them, and so she went back to Winding Circle with Niko. The other girls were horribly mean to her (Sandry took up for Daja in the conflict), so she was sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Trisana Chandler
Tris had been bouncing from foster home to foster home, causing lightening storms wherever she went, until Niko found her and brought her to Winding Circle. I can't for the life of me remember how just presently, but she too gets sent to Lark and Rosethorn at Discepline Cottage.
Other Notables
Dedicate Lark - Sandry's teacher. Extremely level-headed. Thread-mage. Rosethorn's lover.
Dedicate Rosethorn - Briar's teacher. Prickly as all hell. Plant-mage. Lark's lover.
Dedicate Frostpine - Daja's teacher. Metal-mage. Totally chill. Also, the ultimate OTP has to be Frostpine/The Ladies because he is just that awesome.
Dedicate Initiate Crane - Sorta an antagonist but sorta not, Crane is an academic mage and he plays a big part in Briar's Book, but he's not anyone in particular's teacher. (Tris, however says, after hearing that he rides people hard, that he "can ride her with a bit and spurs if he likes". Because Crane is good and Tris wants to learn from him.) Also, Crane likes plants and has a greenhouse. Rosethorn disapproves of his greenhouse but sleeps with him sometimes anyway.
Niklaren (Niko) Goldeye - He's the cool but prickly and fastidious guy who Saw the kids and tracked them down and brought them to Winding Circle. Since nobody could teach Tris in her specific magic, he wound up being her teacher.
Little Bear, the kids' dog.
Chime, Tris's magical pet glass dragon. Think magical artifical intellitelligence.
Luvo, Evvy's magical talking pet rock. Luvo shows up in Melting Stones and briefly in Will of the Empress.
The Circle's Students
Pasco, a dancing police officer in training. Sandry's student.
Evvy, who keeps pet rocks and pet cats. She stars in her very own audiobook, Melting Stones, which will be out in print later on. Briar's student.
Niamara (Nia) Bancanor - Daja's student. Carpentry-mage. Quiet and girly and not adverse to getting married and having kids (especially if said venture involves getting to build ships).
Jorality (Jory) Bancanor - Nia's twin and Daja's other student. Jory is bouncy and frenetic and also a cookery-mage.
Kethlun (Keth) Warder, who is crotchety enough to match Tris. He blows magical sparkey glass.
There's a whole cast of opponents with each book, and this overview is already late, so suffice it that, well, they're various and sundry and in the case of The Circle Opens's villians, pretty damn creepy.
The Fandom:
The Tamora Pierce fandom is in the unique position of having its author at its periphery. She has both a website with attached forums and a livejournal -
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tammypierce
http://tamora-pierce.com/
http://www.sheroescentral.com
http://www.sheroesfans.com
The "Tammy's Books" subforum at sheroes central is a wealth of secondary canon: "the stuff inside the author's head".
And yeah, Pierce is a little prickly and pretty opinionated. Check your straw men at the door and y'all should be fine.
Steelsings is one of the oldest fan-forums and the only active Tortall RP that I know of. It also has a quarterly online fanzine called Icefall. (The sites are named after the two dragonets Daine and Numair meet in Realms of the Gods.)
http://www.steelsings.com
http://www.steelsings.com/fanzine/
The third forum, significantly quieter in its old age than it used to be, is The Dancing Dove. It's prickly and snarky and cynical, as well as being pretty critical of canon. I'm a ghost-admin over there, and it being the place where I did a lot of finding myself in my teen years, will always hold a place in my heart.
http://p101.ezboard.com/bthedancingdove
There are a number of communities on livejournal, many of them sadly defunct.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
piercefic - Fanfiction
pierce_pad - Pairing of the Day
pierce_adult - 18+ discussion forum for the books. Meaning the sex, drugs and gore we see a little of in canon get dragged out into the open for all to talk about.
tortall - Steelsings' affiliated LJ comm and the first place folk go when they look for Tortall fandom on LJ.
tortall100 - Weekly challenge community. Defunct, has been for years, but there's some good writing still there.
book_icons's Tamora Pierce tag
tammy_drabbles
alannajon - Defunct community for the Alanna/Jon ship
tortall_femfic - Tortall femmeslash community, defunct for a few years now.
Help bring the Tamora Pierce fandom back to life on LJ!
Other sites -
fanfiction.net category: http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Tamora_Pierce/
piercings: http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/
and piercings' big list of characters through Lady Knight:
http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/tcharacters.html
and piercings' big list of characters though Cold Fire:
http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/sschars.html
regicide, fansite for villains: http://regicide.rattlethestars.net/
tamora pierce wikia: http://tamorapierce.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
character descriptions: http://carnival-hour.net/pierce/
(Unbeta'd, though, so I'll be editing it for a while yet.)
The whole huge thing that is the overview is below the cut.
Also, huge mega mondo spoilers for absolutely every word Tamora Pierce has ever set to paper.
Unfortunately, I realized it was December before I got the chance to properly re-read anything past Lioness Rampant, so I would be much obliged if y'all excuse the truncated overview of Immortals, Protector of the Small, Trickster's and
Many people know Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe as "oh! those books I read when I was twelve! I can't believe you read them, too!" At least, they are for a bunch of people I've met in fandom outside of Tortall Fadom Proper.
Similarly, a bunch of people I've met within Tortall Fandom Proper know her Emelan universe as "Those books that dissapointed me by not being Tortall."
Tortall: The Universe
Tortall is a universe rich in the grand tradition of handwaving. It's first incarnation - since lost to scissors and paste - was as Alanna: The Big Book For Adults, physically disassembled and reworked into the Song of the Lioness Quartet for teens.
Society is quasi-medieval in Alanna's books and, as of Trickster's Queen,
There is magic. There are gods who take an active role in the lives of their worshippers. And their non-worshippers (see: Aly and Kyprioth. Also, Kyprioth generally).
There is magic in the form of multicolored glowyness. This glowy magic is called the Gift, and it is incredibly versatile. You can perform the equivilant of open-heart surgery with the Gift. You can create a nice, large, flat, fertile area out of a rocky mountainous valley for building stuff on and farming with the Gift. You can blind somebody with a strong light or call up really awesome illusions, even duplicate your own shiny self in magic (more on that later this month, I promise).
Duke Gareth the Elder's Gift is pink, I kid you not.
There's also the Sight, which is pretty much a magical lie-detector slash telescope slash infra-red-x-ray-night-vision goggles and stuff. If it's really strong. If it's not really strong, you can do less stuff with it. George has the Sight, as do his daugher Aly and ancestor Beka.
Tortall as magical creatures - dragons and flesh-eating flying horses and big metal birds that poo and otherwise disrespect battlefields and giants and centaurs and ogres and such - as well as an extremely active pantheon. Tortall's gods? Tortall's gods make the Greek gods look disinterested.
And so without further adieu --
Alanna (/Alan) of Trebond, The Lioness
The "girl pretends to be a boy so she can become a knight" story.
At ten, Alanna is hopeless at the feminine arts, due in large part to having had little to no training in said arts at all. And her brother is just as hopeless at fighting. So they switch places since they look practically identical, Alanna taking Thom's place in page-training at the palace and Thom taking Alanna's place at the northern convent school for girls and mages. (Alanna is afraid of her magic; Thom revels in his.)
At the palace, Alanna meets her posse, saves the prince's life, becomes friends with the King of the Rogue, gets herself a supernatural sword, cat and guide and later has adventures. She defeats evil demons, evil Duke Roger (twice! it's complicated.), an evil pseudo-arab sorcerer and a comes to a compromise with a non-evil abominable snowman. Along the way she comes to terms with herself, her magic and her place in the world.
Also, she kicks butt while doing it. (That's what Tortall is, in Tamora Pierce's own words -- a series of stories about girls kicking butt.)
Her Posse:
Thom of Trebond, Alanna's twin brother. He switches places with her and goes to the City of the Gods to study magecraft while Alanna goes to the palace at Corus to learn knightly stuff.
Maude, her and Thom's nurse. She's a seer, and she helps the twins pull off their switch.
Coram Smythesson, Alanna's manservant and first teacher in the fighting arts.
Prince Jonathan, Alanna's buddy, later knight-master, later lover, later ex, later king. They fight desert-demons together at right before he finds out she's a girl and asks her to be his squire. Also, Jon can be an ass, especially when he doesn't get his way. He spends most of Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess and Lioness Rampant thinking Duke Roger is just super.
George Cooper, King of the Rogue. The first person Alanna really notices on her arrival in Tortall, George becomes her friend, teacher in fighting dirty and eventual husband.
Eleni Cooper, George's mom and Alanna's teacher in All Things Womanly.
Sir Myles of Olau, Alanna's teacher and adoptive father.
Gareth the Elder of Naxen, Alanna's training master, later fencing tutor.
Gareth the Younger of Naxen, Alanna's page-sponser and buddy.
Raoul of Goldenlake, Alanna's buddy.
Francis of Nond, Raoul's "small, blond shadow". He dies. That happens a lot, actually, the dying of minor characters thing.
Liam Ironarm, who has color-change eyes and fears magic. But that doesn't stop him from sleeping with Alanna anyway. Also, he's totally a martial-arts superstar ninja.
Thayet jian Wilima, exiled princess of Sarain and Alanna's buddy. She marries Jon and becomes both queen and the object of much ire from the militant Alanna/Jon shippers. Thayet founds the Queen's Riders and one time charged off into battle in a pink tissue evening gown.
Buriram Tourakom, Thayet's bodyguard and eventual commander of the Queen's Riders. She thinks Alanna & Co are kinda sketchy when she first meets them.
Her Opponents:
Lord Alan of Trebond (stora). Lord Alan wants Alanna to be a lady and Thom to be a knight. Boo, boo!
Ralon of Malven, schoolyard bully. Later on he tries to take George's place as King of the Rogue.
Duke Roger of Conte, Jon's cousin. He's a big bad evil sorcerer who's bent on finding out Alanna's secret and causing her as much discomfort as possible in the process. Also, he tries to steal the throne. Alanna kills him. Twice. Some folk just don't learn. Pretty much everyone spends the first two books thinking he's just super.
Alexander (Alex) of Tirragen, Alanna's friend until he becomes Roger's
Delia of Eldorne, a beautiful lady who gets into Jon's pants, makes Alanna jealous, gets into Roger's pants after Jon dumps her for Alanna and ultimately winds up imprisoned for the rest of her natural life.
Princess Josiane (Rittevon) of the Copper Islands. She was in Jon's pants for a while, then in Roger's plotting, and finally went crazy and started trying to kill people with a battle-axe.
Jem Tanner/Prince Jemis, who irritates Alanna during the Tusaine War and eventually is party to her kidnapping. Also, big surprise, he's in with Roger.
The Ysandir, who are the desert demons Alanna and Jon fight in the desert.
Ahknan Ibn Nazzir, mage of the Bloody Hawk tribe. He's jealous of Alanna's Elite Magical Skills and under the spell of a weird magical (evil) crystal sword that - you guessed it - came staight out of Roger's workshop.
Other Notables:
The Great Mother Goddess, Alanna's supernatural patron.
Faithful, Alanna's supernatural talking cat.
Chitral, the abominable snowmanlike keeper of the Dominion Jewel. Alanna beats him by ... giving up and letting him win.
Veralidaine (Daine) Sarrasri, The Wildmage
Right, so, Veralidaine Sarrasri is a demigod, and she has talking animal friends, and really strong magic and a really hot love interest and ---
WAIT, DON'T RUN AWAY.
Daine starts her quartet thinking she's insane, and her issues are mostly with getting inside her own head and coming to grips with herself as a person who is not crazy and who can show her face in public. She also starts out with a lot of shame about her supposed crazyness (she ran feral for a while after her mom and grandpa died) and about her being a bastard, because the folk in Galla where she's from are way more backward than the Tortallans about kids out of wedlock.
Also, she thinks seeing the badger god, who Weiryn assigned as her guardian, is a sign of her crazyness. Which it isn't. But no one told her this beforehand. Oops.
Numair, who she finds in hawk-form, injured and ill himself, eventually helps her get a grip on her magic and from there, how to heal animals and shapeshift. Because Numair is the world's foremost expert on Wild Magic, which is the kind of magic she has.
She spends the rest of the quartet after about the third quarter of Wild Magic kicking ass and taking names, and dying and coming back to life.
Animals get smarter from hanging out around Daine. More humanlike. This remains something of a moral delimma for her right through to canon present.
Her Posse:
Cloud, her talking pony.
Onua Chamtong, who buys ponies for the Queen's Riders and gives Daine a job and a ride out of Galla.
Numair, her teacher and friend, later lover, later (oh god he finally talked her into it) husband. He's a really, really powerful mage and a bit scatterbrained and ultimately a good guy all around. Often he threatens to kill Daine himself if she keeps making him sick with worry -- with no intent to actually go through with it, and such moments are quite funny in-text.
Mira [whose does not have a last name but that does not stop fandom from deciding that it is "Fisher" because fishing is what her family does], Daine's friend and a Queen's Rider.
Evin Larse, a former player, Daine's friend and eventually Buri's successor as Commander of the Queen's Riders.
Rikash Moonsword, a sneaky stormwing who befriends Daine (eventually) and tricks Ozorne into stormwingifing himself. Stormwings are part man, part metal bird, and roll around in their own poo on battlefields to defile them. Nonetheless, Rikash is cool. He dies in Realms of the Gods, and Daine and Numair name their son after him in Trickster's Queen.
Skysong "Kitten" the dragon, who attaches herself to Daine in Wild Magic.
Maura of Dunlath, who is ten years old at the time of helping save the day in Wolfspeaker, and is slated for her own book sometime in the future.
Tkaa, a basilisk who is pretty much just around to be cool. That and he's a big prissy lizard with a language-kink.
The Longlake Wolf Pack, who help Daine save the day in the second book and are pretty much around to be cool. A whole bunch of the characters in The Immortals are around for the express purpose of being cool.
Kaddar Iliniat, who has a bunch of titles but is ultimately Ozorne's heir apparent, which means he was effectively slated to die at the beginning of Emperor Mage. That is, until Ozorne went and turned himself into a stormwing. He succeeds as Emperor and Marries Kalasin of Conte.
Lindhall Reed, who is more Numair's posse than Daine's, but still. Lindhall is Numair's old teacher and he and Daine take to one another right away.
The Darkings (Leaf, Jelly and Goldstreak), who are blobby creatures that Ozorne made of his blood after he became a stormwing. They spied on Our Heroes before turning on Ozorne and becoming Realms of the God's commic relief.
Her Opponents:
Zahneh Bitterclaws, who is the Little Bad in Wild Magic. She's a stormwing.
Lady Yolane of Dunlath, who is plotting something ultimately inconsequensial in Wolfspeaker and serves as that books Little Bad.
Tristan Staghorn, Numair's old school buddy who's in deep with Ozorne and who's in bed, figuratively as well as literally, with Yolane in Wolfspeaker.
Ozorne, Who wants Numair dead and later tries to sell out the universe to the Goddess of Chaos. Ozorne is both Emperor Mage's and the quartet's Big Bad.
Varice Kingsford, who is Numair's old flame and pretty obviously written specifically for the audience to revile, although I really, really like her.
Various sundry evil immortals working for Ozorne or just plain nasty by nature.
Other Notables:
The Badger God, Daine's magical snarky divine patron.
Weiryn, god of the hunt in Galla, Daine's dad.
Sarra, goddess of childbirth in Daine's hometown, whom Weiryn helped become a god when she died. Daine and Numair name their daughter after her in Trickster's Choice.
Keladry (Kel) of Mindelan, Protector of the Small
Keladry of Mindelan is the daughter of diplomats assigned the the court in Yaman, which serve as Tortall's Japan-analogue. Kel grew up being something of an outcast, and picked up Yamani hyper-politeness as well as some elite fighting skill while she was over there (age 4-10). Then she ships back to Tortall with her parents, rescues some kittens and goes off to become a knight so she can be a hero like her mom, who had once saved some priceless Yamani artifacts from pirates while Kel tagged along and hid behind her kimono. (Kel was little at the time.)
Nobody wants Kel to be a knight at first, and the other pages totally mess with her: turning her room upside down and peeing outside her door and generally being obnoxious ten-to-fourteen-year-old-boys who don't know how do deal with girls yet. The exception is Nealan of Queenscove, who is sixteen by a first-year page because his brothers just died in the Immortals War and he had to become a knight because of his own weird sense of honor.
Kel spends her training working really hard to unlearn all the stuff she learned in Yaman and fighting bullies and fighting hazing and fighting immortals and hill bandits and coming into her own as the kind of person who was born for command. Raoul of Goldenlake takes her own as a squire (Alanna takes Neal and fills in the parts of his healer's education he gave up for knighthood) and while Kel was sad that Alanna didn't take her at first, she's ultimately in a really good spot with Raoul, whose sense of humor bests Alanna's any day of the week.
Also, she acquires a small zoo of her very own without even trying.
As a squire, Kel
Kel passes her Ordeal, becomes the first known female knight and goes on to command a refugee camp for the displaced of the Scanran War and to collect strays.
Her Posse:
... I know this is a copout, but really. Most everyone Kel runs into who doesn't openly oppose her is part of her posse. :\
Her Opponents:
Joren of Stone Mountain and Crew, Kel's assigned schoolyard bullies. Joren has her maid and her dog kidnapped and dies in his Ordeal.
Blayce the Nothing Man, the second books' Big Bad, Blayce imprisons the souls of children for fun.
Various and sundry conservatives who dislike Kel just 'cause she's a girl.
Other Notables:
Lord Wyldon, Kel's page training master. He's a conservative and he doesn't believe Kel's capable til she proves it to him, and then he respects her. He has quite a following in fandom, actually.
The Chamber of the Ordeal, Kel's supernatural
The Mysterious Benefactor, who sends her cool, expensive stuff. Benefactor? Turns out to be Alanna.
Alianne (Aly) of Pirate's Swoop, The Daughter of the Lioness
Right, so, Aly's books were my least favorite of ... all that Pierce has written.
Pretty much they go as follows --
Aly fights with Alanna about having died her hair blue.
Aly runs away.
Gets kidnapped by pirates.
And sold into slavery.
But her new masters are good people! They would never abuse her! Which means all the legitimate worry about potentially being raped she had earlier was for nothing.
She talks to the trickster god, Kyprioth, and makes a deal: keep her masters' two daughters alive for the summer and he'll send her home.
So, after Aly has adventures with a crowman, herding goats, eavesdropping and wearing blackface, she foils some assassins and decides to stay in the Copper Islands anyway.
And that's Trickster's Choice.
Trickster's Queen is a lot more convoluted.
Pretty much it ends with the Pretty Populer Older Sister running off to Carthak to get married and the Bookish Younger Sister becomign queen. Also, Aly pwning some really pathetic enemies, channeling Pratchett's DEATH, uses terrorist tactics to get rid of this week's batch of slave traders by blowing up the docks*, Nawat turning Mysteriously into A Manly Man Grr and deciding to live happily ever after as the Copper Islands' Spymistress.
Also, she has triplets.
*Disclaimer: I'm a homeland security & emergency preparedness major. I cannot stand seeing stunts like Aly pulls lauded, which yeah, her stunt with the slave docks was pretty much lauded with its handling in the text. YMMV.
Rebakah (Beka) Cooper, The Provost's Dog
She fights crime! Sort of. Beka is a Puppy, a trainee on the Provost's Guard some 200 years before Alanna: the First Adventure is set.
Beka's story is a lot about learning to deal with talking to authority figures (she is not terminally shy, not matter what she and the back jacket and Pierce herself may say), and getting knocked down a peg (thrown in a barrel of fish) and building herself back up in her own eyes.
She'd needed to be knocked down a peg because, I kid you not, she dogged the worst ganglord in the city and brought him to justice ... when she was eight years old. Yeah. I had the same look on my face on that happening as y'all probably do now. But still! She does get knocked down a peg, which is the important thing. And she earns her eliteness back in the eyes of the other characters and in the eyes of the readers.
Beka is the same kind of cop as due South's Benton Fraser, in case that's helpful for anyone. She jumps out of several-story windows and runs bad guys all over town, and she will not let a case go.
And so the action plot of the book is Beka solving the unsolvable case. Which she solves. Just in the nick of time, in the spirit of procedural dramas everywhere.
Her Posse:
Gaurdswoman Clara (Clary) Goodwin, Beka's trainer/partner, she is one of the best cops in Corus. She does not put up with BS and she does not put up with BS from Beka, and Goodwin? Didn't want a damn puppy in the first place, but she learns to respect Beka once Beka shows her stuff.
Guardsman Mathias (Mattes) Tunstall -- Beka's other trainer/partner, who has a way better sense of humor than Goodwin does. Also, he's a great big flirt.
Lady Knight Sabine of Macayhill -- She shows up pretty much just to have a Lady Knight in the book and winds up hooking up with Tunstall.
Ersken Westover, Beka's friend and fellow puppy.
Verenne - Beka's friend. She dies, unfortunately, because she's cool. Her dying was the most emotionally wrenching part of the book, and I fully admit to crying when it rolled around.
Rosto the Piper, who is a thief from Scanra, moves into Beka's building, flirts with her and ultimately becomes king of the rogue. He has a skull earring.
Kora Igensra, Rosto's ... friend...thing. She befriends Beka. Stops sleeping with Rosto and starts sleeping with Ersken. It's complicated, except that it's not really that complicated. The complicated part is how everyone stays friends.
Aniki Forfyrsning, Rosto's ... friend...thing. I think? Mostly, she's awesome with a sword. Aniki and Kora both
Tansy Lofts, Beka's childhood friend and Crookshank's granddaughter-in-law. She recently had her son killed because Crookshank was a cheap bastard. She's deep in mourning throughout all of the books, swinging from almost okay to extremely depressed to hysterical, and overall is one of the most believable characters in the book.
Mother Cantwell, who is really ancient and who acts as an informant for Beka in exchange for some money.
Her Opponents:
The Shadowsnake, who has been kidnapping and killing children in the Lower City for a long while. The Shadowsnake turns out to be Mistress Noll, who has been feeding Our Heroes pastries all book long.
Yates Noll, who is Mistress Noll's son and a great big ass of a thug.
Ammun Lofts (Crookshank), the scroogelike landlord and owner of, well, pretty much the whole Lower City. Or so much of it that it seems like it. Tansy's grandfather-in-law. He's so damn cheap he won't pay his own great-grandson's ransom to the Shadowsnake.
Other Notables:
Pounce, Beka's supernatural talking cat. (Yes, the same supernatural talking cat that adopted Alanna.)
The three kids whose mother Beka arrested early on in the book. They make nuisances of themselves throughout, and eventually their father disappears and Beka takes them in because she's a really, really good person.
The Dustspinners, magical spinny mini-tornadoes, which Beka stands in and gets visions from. She feeds them new dirt (literally!) and that makes them happy.
Beka's magical flock of pigeons with funky names, who harass Beka and whose ghosts harass her too.
Emelan: The Univere
Emelan as a universe is set up in a much more orderly fashion than Tortall; where Tortall is seat-of-your-pantsed, Emelan is planned.
It's magic is twofold - academic magic is common, and used for lots of stuff and easy to find. Ambient magic is tougher to find because people who use it draw magic from their crafts.
The pieces of the world are based on places from the real world: Yang Jing on China, Thanatos on republican Athens, et cetera. They follow, effectively, the rules of those places as far as culture goes.
The religion, that we see most of is the Winding Circle Religion, which is sort of zen buddhism on speed and with a bunch of magic to make it sparkly and some really great funding. There are other religions that we don't see much of, but they exist, and the thing is: there's no evidence within the world that any gods exist, which is excellent. (In Tortall the gods are obviously real becaue they show up and meddle.)
Although Emelan is not my area of expertise, so I'll cut off my overview before I get something wrong.
Circle of Magic, in which the kids learn how to use and control their magic and not drive one another absolutely insane.
The Circle Opens, in which the kids take on students of their own and learn how to function apart from their foster-siblings. Also, they fight crime.
Will of the Empress, in which the kids learn to function together again, as adults and separate individuals. Also, Daja is a lesbian and Briar is a man-whore.
Melting Stones, which I have not yet gotten to listen to. But it has Rosethorn and Evvy and a magical talking rock, so it can't be all that bad.
Lady Sandraline (Sandry) fa Toren
Sandry spent a bunch of time in a closet in the dark during the smallpox epidemic that took her parents and her nurse befor Niko tracked her down and brought her to Winding Circle. She's a noble, but she sticks up for the little folk, which made her an outcast among her fellow nobles and got her sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Briar Moss
Briar's a theif and an orphan. Niko tracked him down, too, in a jail in chammur just as he was about to be sent to long-term punishment, and bailed him out. Crane caught him eyeballing an expensive bonsai tree which made Crane angry and suspicious and got him sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Niko rescued Daja, a Trader, from the wreckage of her sunken ship. The other traders labled her terminally unlucky and banished her from among them, and so she went back to Winding Circle with Niko. The other girls were horribly mean to her (Sandry took up for Daja in the conflict), so she was sent to Lark and Rosethorn in Discepline Cottage.
Tris had been bouncing from foster home to foster home, causing lightening storms wherever she went, until Niko found her and brought her to Winding Circle. I can't for the life of me remember how just presently, but she too gets sent to Lark and Rosethorn at Discepline Cottage.
Other Notables
Dedicate Lark - Sandry's teacher. Extremely level-headed. Thread-mage. Rosethorn's lover.
Dedicate Rosethorn - Briar's teacher. Prickly as all hell. Plant-mage. Lark's lover.
Dedicate Frostpine - Daja's teacher. Metal-mage. Totally chill. Also, the ultimate OTP has to be Frostpine/The Ladies because he is just that awesome.
Dedicate Initiate Crane - Sorta an antagonist but sorta not, Crane is an academic mage and he plays a big part in Briar's Book, but he's not anyone in particular's teacher. (Tris, however says, after hearing that he rides people hard, that he "can ride her with a bit and spurs if he likes". Because Crane is good and Tris wants to learn from him.) Also, Crane likes plants and has a greenhouse. Rosethorn disapproves of his greenhouse but sleeps with him sometimes anyway.
Niklaren (Niko) Goldeye - He's the cool but prickly and fastidious guy who Saw the kids and tracked them down and brought them to Winding Circle. Since nobody could teach Tris in her specific magic, he wound up being her teacher.
Little Bear, the kids' dog.
Chime, Tris's magical pet glass dragon. Think magical artifical intellitelligence.
Luvo, Evvy's magical talking pet rock. Luvo shows up in Melting Stones and briefly in Will of the Empress.
The Circle's Students
Pasco, a dancing police officer in training. Sandry's student.
Evvy, who keeps pet rocks and pet cats. She stars in her very own audiobook, Melting Stones, which will be out in print later on. Briar's student.
Niamara (Nia) Bancanor - Daja's student. Carpentry-mage. Quiet and girly and not adverse to getting married and having kids (especially if said venture involves getting to build ships).
Jorality (Jory) Bancanor - Nia's twin and Daja's other student. Jory is bouncy and frenetic and also a cookery-mage.
Kethlun (Keth) Warder, who is crotchety enough to match Tris. He blows magical sparkey glass.
There's a whole cast of opponents with each book, and this overview is already late, so suffice it that, well, they're various and sundry and in the case of The Circle Opens's villians, pretty damn creepy.
The Fandom:
The Tamora Pierce fandom is in the unique position of having its author at its periphery. She has both a website with attached forums and a livejournal -
tammypiercehttp://tamora-pierce.com/
http://www.sheroescentral.com
http://www.sheroesfans.com
The "Tammy's Books" subforum at sheroes central is a wealth of secondary canon: "the stuff inside the author's head".
And yeah, Pierce is a little prickly and pretty opinionated. Check your straw men at the door and y'all should be fine.
Steelsings is one of the oldest fan-forums and the only active Tortall RP that I know of. It also has a quarterly online fanzine called Icefall. (The sites are named after the two dragonets Daine and Numair meet in Realms of the Gods.)
http://www.steelsings.com
http://www.steelsings.com/fanzine/
The third forum, significantly quieter in its old age than it used to be, is The Dancing Dove. It's prickly and snarky and cynical, as well as being pretty critical of canon. I'm a ghost-admin over there, and it being the place where I did a lot of finding myself in my teen years, will always hold a place in my heart.
http://p101.ezboard.com/bthedancingdove
There are a number of communities on livejournal, many of them sadly defunct.
piercefic - Fanfictionpierce_pad - Pairing of the Daypierce_adult - 18+ discussion forum for the books. Meaning the sex, drugs and gore we see a little of in canon get dragged out into the open for all to talk about.tortall - Steelsings' affiliated LJ comm and the first place folk go when they look for Tortall fandom on LJ.tortall100 - Weekly challenge community. Defunct, has been for years, but there's some good writing still there.book_icons's Tamora Pierce tagtammy_drabblesalannajon - Defunct community for the Alanna/Jon shiptortall_femfic - Tortall femmeslash community, defunct for a few years now.Help bring the Tamora Pierce fandom back to life on LJ!
Other sites -
fanfiction.net category: http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Tamora_Pierce/
piercings: http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/
and piercings' big list of characters through Lady Knight:
http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/tcharacters.html
and piercings' big list of characters though Cold Fire:
http://www.u01wmd.supanet.com/piercings/sschars.html
regicide, fansite for villains: http://regicide.rattlethestars.net/
tamora pierce wikia: http://tamorapierce.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
character descriptions: http://carnival-hour.net/pierce/
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That is all :D
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♥
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cheapthrifty, too! All the books I've bought recently have been from the library for $1 or less!YES WE ABSOLUTELY DO.
And, the answer to that question is in a PM :)
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...You might have inspired fic.
Jeez, I love this pairing way too much.
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Yes, please! (Rosethorn/Crane was what really made me love Emelan like I love Tortall.)
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(Also: any Raoul/Buri coming up? Because that pretty much made that series for me. Just, awesome. :D )
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Which is silly because knitting is awesome.
Thank you!
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I don't deny, however, that the writing is at times superior (except for the constant "kids" reminder, but I digress.)
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Many people know Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe as "oh! those books I read when I was twelve! I can't believe you read them, too!"
Hah. That's me. Except that I was also a member of Steelsings for a couple years, so I knew people enjoyed them well into the later teens, but I had no idea that there was a fic fandom. This is just so nifty. I'm looking forward to the recs. :)
(I...know I read Emelan. At least, I know I read the first quartet. I don't remember much of any of those books, I guess. I have no memory of the Rosethorn/Lark or Rosethorn/Crane. Awesome. I may have to go re-reading. I feel like my brain has let me down in the memory department)
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Briar gets sent to dicipline for hiding knives on his person and supposedly stealing from a dorm-mate. The ogling and stealing and bonding with Crane's tree comes after he moved in.
[also, you might want to add the circle-kids' magics? and Tris misses her (Tris). *g*]
otherwise, great overview. Has to be really hard to think of all the things to tell people that don't know the fandom yet...
I'm a little surprised at the militant Alanna/Jon-shippers as well, but I guess every fandom needs some militant shippers.
And I know some people who don't like Emelan as well, but I still don't get why. I mean, come on, you can write threesome and it's practically canon! :D [okay, since Terrier, Tortall *has* canon-threesome...]
Looking forward to your recs.
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This is excellent. I can't wait for the fic! =)
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Also, 'The Hidden Girl', 'Student of Ostriches' and 'Huntress'. Would love to know if there's fic for those. (Come to think of it, I should write some for my Big Damn Table...)
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If I recall correctly, Tris gets sent to Discipline for making a windstorm and then causing a tree to get hit by lightening and just general freaking out one of the Water Novices.
And I definitely second the creepiness of the Circle villains - especially Cold Fire. I also love how you can tell exactly when Tammy got addicted to crime procedurals by when she essentially started writing them. *g*
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I miss the Dancing Dove boards so much; I should visit but I haven't read Terrier. And your description of the Aly books is just how I remember them. Argh. (Apart from Kyprioth, Dove and Taybur, who were made of magnificence.)
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Am I the ONLY one who started Pierce through the Circle books? I bought Tris's book totally at random in like, the 7th grade, and didn't find the Tortall books until the next year or so. I actually like the Emelan books better ^^;
Great overview!
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:D
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