Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic, #1)

by Tamora Pierce

[sa090]

This took way too long to read, it was very difficult for me to keep focused enough to actually progress through it and in the end I just forced myself for the sake of giving the first book in the series a fair chance. Tbh I think this is where this series and I part ways, it's doesn't feel worth it in the slightest.

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This is the first book I ever read from Tamora Pierce and it wasn't impressive or engaging for me. When going into a fantasy setting where the author is trying to establish some unique rules that might set them apart from the other similar series, I expect to see a lot of world building. This book doesn't have much of that, I mean it's a fantasy world where all these names of locations, systems, cultures and new language is thrown around with the expectations that I'll magically get it drawn in my head... How do you expect me to enjoy a story set in a world I can't visualize or understand? It doesn't work like that for me.

The thing that annoyed me the most though was the changing povs, now I read The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan where he had multiple characters be the main pov for a few chapters and the transition was both smooth and fun. For this book however the transition between them was jarring, confusing and messy for me to enjoy in anyway. I mean breaking their povs into chapters like Rick did would've been way better than how she did it with the different pov every page or every few pages. One minute we're with Sandry then we switch to Briar then to Daja then to Sandry again before we go to Tris and so on, I mean come on. I know she's trying to show me 4 different growth stories but a little bit more planning on how to do it, would've been very appreciated.

If I go to the plot itself, it wouldn't be that entertaining to talk about. I mean usually there is this common goal everyone is working towards in a series like this but here it's more the focus on the growth of these children and them learning how to live with their abilities. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider that a bad thing (thousands of stories have some form of that) but the way it was presented, while keeping the previous point in mind, made it kind of boring and uninteresting story to follow. There are hints of bigger forces at play here but given how it was secondary most of the time, it didn't really do much to change anything.

So what about the characters? Same story. Only Rosethorn was interesting to see for me and that's not actually because of things she herself did, but she reminded me of other characters with slightly similar personalities that made me interested to see more about her. Tris caught my attention a bit as well, or more accidents her magic did, the whole controlling the weather thing is something I consider insanely cool. The other characters were forgettable, kind of annoying and in Sandry's case cringe worthy.

While I did like the unique-ish magic here, there weren't that many chances for me to actually see it in practice. The only reason this doesn't get a 1/5 on the dot is because of chapter 8 (out of 9 chapters btw) where something actually interesting that showed these abilities finally happened and it took center stage. Seeing that instance with all their abilities being used was very fun, it was the only instance in the entire book where I read the entire chapter without having to take a break for a few hours. I feel like she really did put a lot of work into this but as far as execution goes, I'm not impressed in the slightest, which is a shame because I really tried to like this book.

Final rating: 1.5/5