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** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since the things prospective employers would want her for would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
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** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out outside of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since the things prospective employers would want her for would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
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** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since it would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
to:
** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since it the things prospective employers would want her for would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
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*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friends with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had no relatives her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
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*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents parents' supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friends with local commoners common children that also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had no relatives her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
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** In ''The Will of the Empress'', the group meet Zhegorz, a middle-aged man who was institutionalized because his ability to hear things on the wind was mistaken for madness and even after learning the truth still has many squirrelly behaviors acquired over a lifetime of believing himself to be mentally ill, yet there is no passage where Tris reflects on how easily she could have suffered the same fate.
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* ValuesDissonance: In ''Cold Fire'', the wearing of fur. Tamora Pierce herself wrote a note found at the end of the book explaining ''why'' the fur-wearing was necessary and reassuring her fans that in RealLife, she's very against the wearing of fur since we have ''much'' better ways to keep warm in modern times.
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* ValuesDissonance: ValuesDissonance:
** In ''Cold Fire'', the wearing of fur. Tamora Pierce herself wrote a note found at the end of the book explaining ''why'' the fur-wearing was necessary and reassuring her fans that in RealLife, she's very against the wearing of fur since we have ''much'' better ways to keep warm in modern times.
** In ''Cold Fire'', the wearing of fur. Tamora Pierce herself wrote a note found at the end of the book explaining ''why'' the fur-wearing was necessary and reassuring her fans that in RealLife, she's very against the wearing of fur since we have ''much'' better ways to keep warm in modern times.
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* AuthorsSavingThrow: To a whole other series. Pierce had gotten a lot of flack for writing a romance between a 30 year old man and his teenage student in the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'', and presenting it as nothing but good and desirable. So here she gives us Bennat's creepy obsession with Daja, showing that she fully understands how bad this kind of thing can be.
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* UnfortunateImplications: As discussed [[http://markreads.net/reviews/2015/07/mark-reads-cold-fire-chapter-14/ here]], Heluda’s statement in ''Cold Fire'' that children who are abused will inevitably grow up to be evil really could have stood to be more challenged by the narrative.
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Correcting my own grammer issues and clarifying pronouns
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022 and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do). Even worse is how overwhelmed the book's healers are, complete with ''Rosethorn'', of all people, breaking down from overwork and feeling useless in the face of the unknown disease and nearly succumbing to the disease itself. It's a heartbreaking foreshadowing of exactly what happened to RealLife medical personnel during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, as hospitals and medical centers were overrun with patients and doctors and nurses caught the disease themselves, increasing the strain on the already-overwhelmed medical systems.
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022 and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do). Even worse is how overwhelmed the book's healers are, complete with ''Rosethorn'', of all people, breaking down from overwork and feeling useless in the face of the unknown disease and nearly succumbing to the disease itself. herself. It's a heartbreaking foreshadowing of exactly what happened to RealLife medical personnel during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, as hospitals and medical centers were overrun with patients patients, and doctors and nurses also caught the disease themselves, and died, despite all known precautions, increasing the strain on the already-overwhelmed medical systems.
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Adding more context to Harsher In Hindsight to stress just how much harsher COVID made that particular book.
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022 and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do).
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022 and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do). Even worse is how overwhelmed the book's healers are, complete with ''Rosethorn'', of all people, breaking down from overwork and feeling useless in the face of the unknown disease and nearly succumbing to the disease itself. It's a heartbreaking foreshadowing of exactly what happened to RealLife medical personnel during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, as hospitals and medical centers were overrun with patients and doctors and nurses caught the disease themselves, increasing the strain on the already-overwhelmed medical systems.
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"Idiot Plot" is now Flame Bait. Renamed one trope.
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* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
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* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
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* IdiotPlot: In ''Melting Stones'', Evvy and Rosethorn are given every single clue you could possibly want that a volcano is about to erupt, including what Evvy literally calls volcanic stones where they shouldn't be, but somehow it takes them almost half the book to figure it out, and the reveal is then written in a way to suggest the reader should be just as surprised.
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022, following the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles how our pandemic occurred - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do).
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022, following the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic 2022 and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles how our pandemic occurred the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do).
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* HarsherInHindsight: Just try reading ''Briar's Book'' in 2022, following the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic and see how many times you get chills from how much the book resembles how our pandemic occurred - a brand new disease is discovered, nobody knows where it came from or how to fight it, and it's a race against time to find a vaccine (and thank god, they do).
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* WhatAnIdiot:
** Granted, she was in the midst of her FirstLove ''and'' the realization of her sexuality, but Daja expecting Rizu to drop her high-status position in the court of an Empress she feels a deep personal sense of love and gratitude towards, for a person she's known for about a month, is pretty silly.
** Empress Berenene wants Sandry and her friends to stay in Namorn; pragmatically, Sandry is the heir to the money in her Namornese lands and they all have useful mage skills. She advises the court indirectly to entice the Circle to stay. Sandy also opposes the forced-marriage abduction rules, rescuing one woman from an abusive marriage. Thus, it seems logically the best way to win her over is to court her traditionally, the way that Daja has a courtesan lover. Some men then try to kidnap Sandry anyway to force her to marry them, and it's hinted with the Empress's support. It backfires; her friends despite some ambushes are able to rescue her, and they call out the guards for not caring about it. Sandry is also motivated to get herself and her friends ''out'' of Namorn because she has a normal response to being kidnapped: relocate to a safer place.
** Okay, Jak, you want to tell Sandry how truly sorry you are for her mistreatment at the hands of your countrymen and how you so very much disagree with the abduction-marriage tradition. Drawing your sword to ''force'' your way into the house very shortly after she's just escaped from one such attempt is, perhaps, not the best gesture of good faith?
** Granted, she was in the midst of her FirstLove ''and'' the realization of her sexuality, but Daja expecting Rizu to drop her high-status position in the court of an Empress she feels a deep personal sense of love and gratitude towards, for a person she's known for about a month, is pretty silly.
** Empress Berenene wants Sandry and her friends to stay in Namorn; pragmatically, Sandry is the heir to the money in her Namornese lands and they all have useful mage skills. She advises the court indirectly to entice the Circle to stay. Sandy also opposes the forced-marriage abduction rules, rescuing one woman from an abusive marriage. Thus, it seems logically the best way to win her over is to court her traditionally, the way that Daja has a courtesan lover. Some men then try to kidnap Sandry anyway to force her to marry them, and it's hinted with the Empress's support. It backfires; her friends despite some ambushes are able to rescue her, and they call out the guards for not caring about it. Sandry is also motivated to get herself and her friends ''out'' of Namorn because she has a normal response to being kidnapped: relocate to a safer place.
** Okay, Jak, you want to tell Sandry how truly sorry you are for her mistreatment at the hands of your countrymen and how you so very much disagree with the abduction-marriage tradition. Drawing your sword to ''force'' your way into the house very shortly after she's just escaped from one such attempt is, perhaps, not the best gesture of good faith?
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* FanNickname: The four main kids are known as "the goats", due to Tamora Pierce's constant in-story habit referring to them as such and then elaborating with some form of the phrase "street slang for child, actually means baby goat".
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*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friends with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
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*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friends with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had no relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
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* AccidentalAesop: The story of Yarrun in ''Daja's Book'' can be taken for an Objectivist message: there are certain people who are just better than others who deserve all the world's fame, and anyone who doesn't like it is just a jealous asshole.
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* AccidentalAesop: The story of Yarrun in ''Daja's Book'' can be taken for an Objectivist message: there are certain people who are just better than others who deserve all the world's fame, and anyone who doesn't like it is just a jealous asshole. It could also be that you need to know when to swallow your pride before a great disaster happens.
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* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: Even though the protagonists start at age 10, this is ''not'' something you should show your ten-year-old. Even in the first series (arguably the lightest), rape is explicitly mentioned and there are quite a few gruesome deaths. And yet some libraries still put it in the kids' section.
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Removing an example that is violates the stated conditions of the YMMV trope in question. Twilight is a completely unrelated series to this one & there is nothing between the two series that suggests any interactions. Hilarious In Hindsight states it's about events later in the same series or in Real Life that make a scene funny in retrospect...but considering the scene in question is about Daja being the lone survivor of a horrific pirate attack that slaughters her family.
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* HilariousInHindsight: Daja's first appearance has her covered in salt, making her [[Literature/{{Twilight}} white and sparkling]].
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** Empress Berenene wants Sandry and her friends to stay in Namorn; pragmatically, Sandry is the heir to the money in her Namornese lands and they all have useful mage skills. She advises the court indirectly to entice the Circle to stay. Sandy also opposes the forced-marriage abduction rules, rescuing one woman from an abusive marriage. Thus, it seems logically the best way to win her over is to court her traditionally, the way that Daja has a courtesan lover. Some men then try to kidnap Sandry anyway to force her to marry them, and it's hinted with the Empress's support. It backfires; her friends despite some ambushes are able to rescue her, and they call out the guards for not caring about it. Sandry is also motivated to get herself and her friends ''out'' of Namorn because she has a normal response to being kidnapped: relocate to a safer place.
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Well, Daya DID have two “students” to the others’ respective one each, so...
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* BaseBreakingCharacter: Evvy, sort of. While she remains a popular character, fans are also getting a bit restless about her being a SpotlightStealingSquad and apparently the only one of the four students from the Opens series that Pierce has any interest in exploring further, to the point that she has her own first person narrated book, the only one the author has ''ever'' done.
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* BaseBreakingCharacter: Evvy, sort of. While she remains a popular character, fans are also getting a bit restless about her being a SpotlightStealingSquad and apparently the only one of the four five students from the Opens series that Pierce has any interest in exploring further, to the point that she has her own first person narrated book, the only one the author has ''ever'' done.
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*** Jian Jiu, one of Weishu's imperial mages, befriends the 10-year-old stone mage Evvy during her time among Weishu's court before revealing herself chapters later to be one of Weishu's [[SociopathicSoldier most twisted soldiers]]. Jian Jiu leads the total slaughter of a hugely-populated fortress during the war on Gyongxe, not just of the soldiers but of every innocent within the walls down to the [[WouldHurtAChild infants]] and all the [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals animals]] as well. Jian Jiu personally tortures Evvy days after they seemingly bonded, using the knowledge gained from this friendship to try and [[ForcedToWatch force Evvy to watch]] as Jian Jiu starts torturing Evvy's cats to death. When Evvy escapes, Jian Jiu murders two of her own men to save face.
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*** [[EvilSorceress Jian Jiu, Jiu]], one of Weishu's imperial mages, befriends the 10-year-old stone mage Evvy during her time among Weishu's court before revealing herself chapters later to be one of Weishu's [[SociopathicSoldier most twisted soldiers]]. Jian Jiu leads the total slaughter of a hugely-populated fortress during the war on Gyongxe, not just of the soldiers but of every innocent within the walls down to the [[WouldHurtAChild infants]] and all the [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals animals]] as well. Jian Jiu personally tortures Evvy days after they seemingly bonded, using the knowledge gained from this friendship to try and [[ForcedToWatch force Evvy to watch]] as Jian Jiu starts torturing Evvy's cats to death. When Evvy escapes, Jian Jiu murders two of her own men to save face.
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Approved by the thread
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* CompleteMonster: The ''Literature/{{Circleverse}}'' has several monsters in it, particularly in the ''Circle Opens"'' books
** In ''Street Magic'', Lady Zenadia seems at first to be retired and a CoolOldLady, but is in reality an utterly bored and cruel sadist with no regard for the lives of others. Recruiting a teenaged street gang, she has them engage in deadly street wars [[ForTheEvulz for her amusement.]] Any members who displease her, she [[WouldHurtAChild strangles and buries in her garden for good fertilizer.]]
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family, the Rokats, getting away with it because they have addicted a mage (by the way, a child mutilated by pirates, possessing a terrifying magical power that has ruined his life ''before'' they met him) to a FantasticDrug so he will be utterly dependent on them. Upon attacking the family, the two make certain they kill the baby first, before [[WouldHurtAChild killing the little girl]], then their rival, then his wife in case she might be pregnant again. Alzena specifically saved Rokat until after he had seen his children die. It made it more fun.
** In ''Street Magic'', Lady Zenadia seems at first to be retired and a CoolOldLady, but is in reality an utterly bored and cruel sadist with no regard for the lives of others. Recruiting a teenaged street gang, she has them engage in deadly street wars [[ForTheEvulz for her amusement.]] Any members who displease her, she [[WouldHurtAChild strangles and buries in her garden for good fertilizer.]]
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family, the Rokats, getting away with it because they have addicted a mage (by the way, a child mutilated by pirates, possessing a terrifying magical power that has ruined his life ''before'' they met him) to a FantasticDrug so he will be utterly dependent on them. Upon attacking the family, the two make certain they kill the baby first, before [[WouldHurtAChild killing the little girl]], then their rival, then his wife in case she might be pregnant again. Alzena specifically saved Rokat until after he had seen his children die. It made it more fun.
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* CompleteMonster: The ''Literature/{{Circleverse}}'' has several monsters in it, particularly in the ''Circle Opens"'' books
CompleteMonster:
**In ''Street Magic'', ''[[Literature/TheCircleOpens Street Magic]]'': [[AristocratsAreEvil Lady Zenadia seems at first to be retired and a CoolOldLady, but doa Attaneh]] is a noblewoman [[EvilOldFolks in reality an utterly bored and cruel sadist with no regard for the lives senior years of others. Recruiting her life]] who, finding nothing more in her regal life stimulates her anymore, turns to lording over a teenaged gang full of street gang, she has them engage in deadly street wars orphans [[ForTheEvulz for her amusement.]] Any members own amusement]]. Zenadia wins the loyalty of the children with money and clean clothing, dubs them the "Vipers", then sends them off to start causing [[MobWar gang wars]] regardless of how many people die in the process. Those she deems lacking "discipline" or who displease her, she otherwise bore her are strangled to death by her mute assassin and used as fertilizer for her sapient plants, who gloat about how well fed they are. Zenadia elects to [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kill herself rather than face justice]] at the end of the novel, dismissing all the orphan children she's murdered as tools without value.
** ''Literature/BattleMagic'':
*** [[TheEmperor Emperor Weishu]], ruler of the current dynasty of Yanjing, is a [[BitchInSheepsClothing superficially-pleasant]] man whose charms fly out the window when he has a score of gardeners burned alive in their own garden [[DisproportionateRetribution for the crime of a single wilted rose]]. [[BadBoss Weishu]] visits cruelties like these on his servants readily and often, keeping his torture chambers readily stocked with anyone dissenting against his rule as well as generations of their family members. Weishu keeps a man he purchased from another noble as his twisted pet who grimly relates that he's seen Weishu torture people to death himself and even once sends a poisoned gift to an elderly old woman simply because she'd been a vocal critic of his regime. Weishu visits a massive war upon the neighboring nation of Gyongxe and openly fancies himself [[AGodAmI their new god]] when he briefly conquers the nation.
*** Jian Jiu, one of Weishu's imperial mages, befriends the 10-year-old stone mage Evvy during her time among Weishu's court before revealing herself chapters later to be one of Weishu's [[SociopathicSoldier most twisted soldiers]]. Jian Jiu leads the total slaughter of a hugely-populated fortress during the war on Gyongxe, not just of the soldiers but of every innocent within the walls down to the [[WouldHurtAChildstrangles infants]] and buries in her garden for good fertilizer.]]
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family,all the Rokats, getting away with it because they have addicted a mage (by the way, a child mutilated by pirates, possessing a terrifying magical power that has ruined his life ''before'' they met him) to a FantasticDrug so he will be utterly dependent on them. Upon attacking the family, the two make certain they kill the baby first, before [[WouldHurtAChild killing the little girl]], then their rival, then his wife in case she might be pregnant again. Alzena specifically saved Rokat until [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals animals]] as well. Jian Jiu personally tortures Evvy days after he had seen his children die. It made it more fun.they seemingly bonded, using the knowledge gained from this friendship to try and [[ForcedToWatch force Evvy to watch]] as Jian Jiu starts torturing Evvy's cats to death. When Evvy escapes, Jian Jiu murders two of her own men to save face.
**
** ''Literature/BattleMagic'':
*** [[TheEmperor Emperor Weishu]], ruler of the current dynasty of Yanjing, is a [[BitchInSheepsClothing superficially-pleasant]] man whose charms fly out the window when he has a score of gardeners burned alive in their own garden [[DisproportionateRetribution for the crime of a single wilted rose]]. [[BadBoss Weishu]] visits cruelties like these on his servants readily and often, keeping his torture chambers readily stocked with anyone dissenting against his rule as well as generations of their family members. Weishu keeps a man he purchased from another noble as his twisted pet who grimly relates that he's seen Weishu torture people to death himself and even once sends a poisoned gift to an elderly old woman simply because she'd been a vocal critic of his regime. Weishu visits a massive war upon the neighboring nation of Gyongxe and openly fancies himself [[AGodAmI their new god]] when he briefly conquers the nation.
*** Jian Jiu, one of Weishu's imperial mages, befriends the 10-year-old stone mage Evvy during her time among Weishu's court before revealing herself chapters later to be one of Weishu's [[SociopathicSoldier most twisted soldiers]]. Jian Jiu leads the total slaughter of a hugely-populated fortress during the war on Gyongxe, not just of the soldiers but of every innocent within the walls down to the [[WouldHurtAChild
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family,
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*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friedmds with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
to:
*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friedmds friends with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
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Removing justyfing edits
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** She might just be a StepfordSmiler and she might have been seeing a mind healer off screen.
*** In which case there would have been no reason ''not'' to mention those things because Briar was being a StepfordSmiler (badly) and the girls were trying to get him to visit a mind-healer himself.
*** In which case there would have been no reason ''not'' to mention those things because Briar was being a StepfordSmiler (badly) and the girls were trying to get him to visit a mind-healer himself.
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* HilariousInHindsight: Daja's first appearance has her covered in salt, making her [[{{Twilight}} white and sparkling]].
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* HilariousInHindsight: Daja's first appearance has her covered in salt, making her [[{{Twilight}} [[Literature/{{Twilight}} white and sparkling]].
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** The crew of Third Ship Kisubo were Daja's family, and she's the sole survivor, but other Kisubo ships with other family members exist, and relatives too old or young to go to sea are on the land. But even when her ''trangshi'' status is revoked she doesn't so much as think of contacting them.
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** The crew of Third Ship Kisubo were Daja's immediate family, and she's the sole survivor, but other Kisubo ships with other family members exist, and relatives too old or young to go to sea are on the land. But even when her ''trangshi'' status is revoked she doesn't so much as think of contacting them.
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** In ''The Will of the Empress'' Briar's flashbacks and partial accounts of his, Rosethorn's, and Evvy's time in Gyongxe suggest a much, ''much'' more dire experience than is actually shown in ''Battle Magic'', which has some very dark moments but nothing that should have Briar telling Tris that if she'd been there with him the war would have gone differently.
** During ''Battle Magic'' it's explained that what makes shamans different from other mages is that each shaman was trained from an early age to work closely with several others so they can combine their power. This sounds vaguely like what the Circle four have.
** During ''Battle Magic'' it's explained that what makes shamans different from other mages is that each shaman was trained from an early age to work closely with several others so they can combine their power. This sounds vaguely like what the Circle four have.
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** In ''Daja's Book'', one of the important subplots concerns the protagonists' magics becoming so entangled that they've started displaying others' magics (as shown by Briar accidentally burning saffron with lightning and Sandry accidentally melting a metal thread in a jacket). By the end of the book, the four's magics have been separated, but it's explicitly stated that they still have traces' of the others' magic in them. But apart from being able to see magic (and draw heat, in Daja's case), all of them stick with the same powers they had at the start- there's no scenes where Daja has thread powers, or Tris has metal powers, or Sandry has lightning powers.
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** In ''Daja's Book'', one of the important subplots concerns the protagonists' magics becoming so entangled that they've started displaying others' magics (as shown by Briar accidentally burning saffron with lightning and Sandry accidentally melting a metal thread in a jacket). By the end of the book, the four's magics have been separated, but it's explicitly stated that they still have traces' of the others' magic in them. But apart from being able to see magic (and draw heat, in Daja's case), all of them stick with the same powers they had at the start- there's no scenes where Daja has thread plant powers, or Tris has metal powers, or Sandry has lightning powers, or Briar has thread powers.
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** In ''Daja's Book'', one of the important subplots concerns the protagonists' magics becoming so entangled that they've started displaying others' magics (as shown by Briar accidentally burning saffron with lightning and Sandry accidentally melting a metal thread in a jacket). By the end of the book, the four's magics have been separated, but it's explicitly stated that they still have traces' of the others' magic in them. But apart from being able to see magic (and draw heat, in Daja's case), all of them stick with the same powers they had at the start- there's no scenes where Daja has thread powers, or Tris has metal powers, or Sandry has lightning powers.
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* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Frequently and ''awesomely''. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
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* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Frequently and ''awesomely''. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
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** The crew of Third Ship Kisubo were Daja's family, and she's the sole survivor, but other Kisubo ships with other family members exist, and relatives too old or young to go to sea are on the land. But even when her ''trangshi'' status is revoked she doesn't so much as think of contacting them.
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** Rosethorn. [[spoiler:Horrifically abused by her father]], watched her best friend raped and killed by raiders as a teen, contracts the Blue Pox in ''Briar's Book'' and ''dies''. Brought back to life but is severely weakened (this is especially obvious in ''Battle Magic''), gets caught up in a war and ends up with severe PTSD. And these are only the more major things.
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** Rosethorn. [[spoiler:Horrifically abused by her father]], watched her best friend raped and killed by raiders as a teen, contracts the Blue Pox in ''Briar's Book'' and ''dies''. Brought back to life but is severely weakened (this is especially obvious in ''Battle Magic''), gets caught up in a war and ends up with severe PTSD. And these are only the more major things.things.
** Frostpine relates part of his backstory in ''Daja's Book''. He was born to a poor family, but a local mage could sense the magic in him and paid his parents so he could siphon it away. They lived well after that. Frostpine grew up with the sense that he was somehow incomplete, gravitating towards the forge anyway, and when the mage died when he was fifteen the magic returning to him almost killed him. When he recovered metal sang to him and his tools melted, the smith kicked him out, his life was in ruins and his parents told him they'd sold his magic for ''his'' good.
** Frostpine relates part of his backstory in ''Daja's Book''. He was born to a poor family, but a local mage could sense the magic in him and paid his parents so he could siphon it away. They lived well after that. Frostpine grew up with the sense that he was somehow incomplete, gravitating towards the forge anyway, and when the mage died when he was fifteen the magic returning to him almost killed him. When he recovered metal sang to him and his tools melted, the smith kicked him out, his life was in ruins and his parents told him they'd sold his magic for ''his'' good.
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* AccidentalAesop: The story of Yarrun in ''Daja's Book'' can be taken for an Objectivist message: there are certain people who are just better than others who deserve all the world's fame, and anyone who doesn't like it is just a jealous asshole.
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
** Did the Trader Council make Daja a ''trangshi'' because they actually saw the future and knew it would be much better for the world? After all, without her there the other three would have died in the earthquake and not been there to stop any of the disasters that followed, all so that Daja could live what she quickly comes to realize would have been a far less fulfilling life.
** In ''Cold Fire'', exactly how much of Bennat Ladradun's interactions with Daja are deliberate manipulations, as opposed to genuinely wanting her to understand and sympathize with him? This applies especially to his offering a "guess" to the arsonist's motives that makes Daja think he's defending them.
* AngstWhatAngst: Gudruny Iarun. She spent decades married to a physically and verbally abusive husband (who she never wanted to marry in the first place), was callously refused help by Sandry's mother twice, and finally snuck into Sandry's house and hiding in a desperate attempt to have her marriage annulled. She's described then as looking permanently worn-out and disheveled, naturally, and one would expect that suffering many years of DomesticAbuse would leave her with many emotional issues — nope. As soon as Sandry hires her as a maid, Gudruny turns into a motherly mentor with no apparent ill effects from her mistreatment, with no mention of her having ever visited a mind-healer.[[note]]From conversations with Briar, it's implied they can magically treat mental disorders.[[/note]]
** She might just be a StepfordSmiler and she might have been seeing a mind healer off screen.
*** In which case there would have been no reason ''not'' to mention those things because Briar was being a StepfordSmiler (badly) and the girls were trying to get him to visit a mind-healer himself.
* AuthorsSavingThrow: To a whole other series. Pierce had gotten a lot of flack for writing a romance between a 30 year old man and his teenage student in the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'', and presenting it as nothing but good and desirable. So here she gives us Bennat's creepy obsession with Daja, showing that she fully understands how bad this kind of thing can be.
* BaseBreakingCharacter: Evvy, sort of. While she remains a popular character, fans are also getting a bit restless about her being a SpotlightStealingSquad and apparently the only one of the four students from the Opens series that Pierce has any interest in exploring further, to the point that she has her own first person narrated book, the only one the author has ''ever'' done.
* BrokenBase:
** ''Literature/TheCircleOpens'' has some criticism from fans due to the lack of interaction between the four Circle members that made the first series so much fun. Others argue that the characters it adds are just as interesting in their own right and the books open up the world of Emelan similar to the Tortall series.
** Some fans really weren't happy with the serious divisions in the group from ''Literature/TheWillOfTheEmpress'', as a large part of the series' appeal is the friendship between the four, and no matter how well justified, seeing them at odds is no fun to read about. Also, some fans take issue with Briar having gone through a major life-changing event between books that goes largely unexplained until two books later, making him harder to empathize with.
** After ''Literature/MeltingStones'', many fans turned on Rosethorn for being downright emotionally abusive towards Evvy, constantly flip-flopping in what she expects the poor girl to do and telling her outright that it's her fault Meryem ran away from the evacuation when it's demonstrably not. And yet, we're supposed to be on her side through the whole thing and cheer on Evvy ending up crushed under her will.
** There's a bit of a rift in the fanbase over whether Pierce should have written ''Literature/BattleMagic'' before the preceding two books, which take place after it. The pro side says that after four books of each main character on their own, it was important to see them all together again in the next one, and that our foreknowledge about what's going to happen in BM greatly adds to the experience. The anti side says that it's irritating to miss such a huge event in Briar and Evvy's lives at first and have no context for the way it changed their personalities, and it doesn't help that Pierce apparently changed her mind on some of the details before writing BM, making some of their recollections about it pretty nonsensical.
** ''Battle Magic'' also has some controversy over the far more prominent role played by gods and spirits, which many fans accuse of clashing with the setting as portrayed up until then, and feeling more like something that belongs in the Tortall series. Some of them also call UnfortunateImplications on this increased exoticism being played in an analogue to southeast Asian countries.
* CompleteMonster: The ''Literature/{{Circleverse}}'' has several monsters in it, particularly in the ''Circle Opens"'' books
** In ''Street Magic'', Lady Zenadia seems at first to be retired and a CoolOldLady, but is in reality an utterly bored and cruel sadist with no regard for the lives of others. Recruiting a teenaged street gang, she has them engage in deadly street wars [[ForTheEvulz for her amusement.]] Any members who displease her, she [[WouldHurtAChild strangles and buries in her garden for good fertilizer.]]
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family, the Rokats, getting away with it because they have addicted a mage (by the way, a child mutilated by pirates, possessing a terrifying magical power that has ruined his life ''before'' they met him) to a FantasticDrug so he will be utterly dependent on them. Upon attacking the family, the two make certain they kill the baby first, before [[WouldHurtAChild killing the little girl]], then their rival, then his wife in case she might be pregnant again. Alzena specifically saved Rokat until after he had seen his children die. It made it more fun.
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Frequently and ''awesomely''. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
* HilariousInHindsight: Daja's first appearance has her covered in salt, making her [[{{Twilight}} white and sparkling]].
* IdiotPlot: In ''Melting Stones'', Evvy and Rosethorn are given every single clue you could possibly want that a volcano is about to erupt, including what Evvy literally calls volcanic stones where they shouldn't be, but somehow it takes them almost half the book to figure it out, and the reveal is then written in a way to suggest the reader should be just as surprised.
* {{Moe}}: The [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091120201640/tamorapierce/images/2/27/Briar%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg Japanese]] [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090617053710/tamorapierce/images/5/58/Daja%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg book]] [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090524152629/tamorapierce/images/3/36/SB_Japanese.jpg covers]], but mostly [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090605163044/tamorapierce/images/b/b2/Tris%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg Tris.]] Incidentally, Daja seems to have turned into [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Katara]] in that last pic.
** The twins from ''Cold Fire'' also come off as Moe, Nia as the ShrinkingViolet variety and Jory as a {{Tsundere}}.
* {{Narm}}:
** The unusually hamfisted foreshadowing for [[spoiler:Yali's]] death in ''Shatterglass'', which may get you wondering why Pierce didn't also go with a flock of buzzards suddenly appearing.
** Rosethorn's "builders and destroyers" speech in ''Melting Stones'', an absurd piece of BlackAndWhiteMorality from an author who's usually pretty good at exploring moral gray areas.
** In ''Battle Magic'', Briar's face is described as turning "the colour of cheese". Um, you might want to be more specific there.
** At the end of ''Battle Magic'' it's explained that Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn will forget everything about the gods as part of the magical protection around the area. It feels exactly like Pierce reached this point and then suddenly realized how weird it would retroactively make the previous two books for that stuff to never be mentioned, so she spent a couple minutes coming up with an explanation to throw in. And not helping is that she'd already done the ''exact same thing'' in the Tortall series' own prequel story ''Mastiff''.
* ParanoiaFuel: Sandry's thread magic. Goes hand in hand with her whole HeartIsAnAwesomePower thing. Mess with her and she could murder you with the clothes on your back.
** Also, her backstory. She survived the smallpox epidemic because her nurse locked her in a small room, after walking into find her parents dead bodies in their bedroom, alone, in the dark after her oil lamp ran out of oil. She manages to discover her latent magical powers, but by the time she gets out of the room, everyone in the house is dead.
** Imagine managing to piss off the entire circle as a whole. Suddenly, you can no longer trust metal, thread, fire, plants, or even the air you breathe or the earth under your feet not to attack you.
* TheScrappy: Lady Zenadia is one of Pierce's least popular villains, thanks to her lack of any motivation for her monstrous actions beyond some vague "rich people are evil" pandering.
* SoOkayItsAverage: The general opinion on ''Melting Stones'', which is seen to suffer from what had by then become an extremely stock plot and characters for Tamora Pierce's writing.
* StrawmanHasAPoint:
** In ''Daja's Book'', the group meets an academic mage named Yarrun [[MeaningfulName Firetamer]] who is very resentful of famous mages like Niko. He's obnoxious and refuses to listen to Rosethorn's accurate assessment of the fire danger [[spoiler:and dies when he's too proud to accept help when she's proved right]], but he has a conversation with Daja in which he complains about how mages who see to "mundane" things like plumbing and food spoilage are scorned in favor of people with unusual or flashy specialties. Yarrun might be a pill but those things are, in fact, very important to society (see how long you let your toilet back up before you call the plumber), and "if other people can work their spells as you do and get the same results" is how scientific research in RealLife ''actually works''. Daja dismisses it as more bitterness.
*** Oddly enough, this is something that Niko tells the four, reversing it by saying that university mages learn to do fantastic things, but nobody can live without clothes, metal, plants, or weather.
*** In her defense, her calling it bitterness came from him saying she and her friends were "fortunate" and she's remembering how each of them had their lives ruined by their magic/in the process of discovering it. Plus, the people who get famous for without reasons aren't to blame for the system anymore than the people who unfairly lack acclaim, so bitterly resenting the famous mages is pretty petty.
*** ''Briar's Book'' actually seems to acknowledge it, in a subtle way. The whole plague only comes about because a mage of ''far'' lower standing than even Yarrun could hardly afford either food or rent. As such, she reluctantly dumps some magical waste instead of paying the cost for proper disposal, accidentally releasing a magical disease on the land.
** Briar meets with the ''mutabir'', or head of the City Watch, during ''Street Magic''. We're supposed to hate him, as does Briar, for acting so heartless about the problems of Chammur, and for wanting to use Evvy as a spy in Lady Zenadia's house. The thing is, everything the ''mutabir'' says is absolutely correct. For all Briar and Rosethorn may have saved one girl from poverty, there are thousands more they didn't, and no-one can save them all. If he gets rid of the current gangs, more will rise to take their places, as has always happened. He really can't pin a few murders of beggars and street orphans on one of the most powerful people in the city. And he is genuinely trying to clean up the corruption in the city; while using a child as a double agent in such a dangerous household is morally reprehensible, from his position it is the only way he can nail Zenadia for her crimes.
** During the final battle in ''The Will of the Empress'', [[WorthyOpponent Ishabal Ladyhammer]] taunts Sandry, Briar and Daja with "You cannot be so foolish as to think the powers of the world might allow you to pursue your own selfish desires all your days. Wake up, children. It is time to learn to live in the real world". The characters are not inclined to listen (especially as she is the one who [[spoiler: cursed Tris]] and dismiss her as haughty, [[SillyRabbitCynicismIsForLosers too cynical]] and ignorant of PowerOfFriendship, and narratively, [[spoiler: them subsequently beating Ishabal and (temporarily) depowering her]] seems to prove them right, painting her as a classical ThisCannotBe villain. But ultimately her taunting is correct: no matter how powerful the Circle is, they cannot take on the whole Namorn Empire. Sandry [[spoiler: being forced to sign over her lands, thus guaranteeing that the money from them stays in Namorn]] is indicative of this.
* TearJerker: One at the end of ''Briar's Book'' when [[spoiler: Rosethorn dies, and Briar follows her with all three girls providing an anchor at their own risk]].
** Tris and Keth in ''Shatterglass'' being brought before and shown [[spoiler: Yali's corpse]]. Even ''Chime'' cried!
*** Followed up with the scene where Tris holds the now-orphaned [[spoiler:Glaki]] as she cries, because she has no one else, and Tris remembers what that's like.
** In ''The Will of the Empress'', Rizu refuses to leave Namorn and come with Daja, thus breaking Daja's heart. Comparing the state Daja was left in with how happy she was with Rizu is enough to make anyone tear up.
** The deaths of [[spoiler: Evvy's cats]] in ''Battle Magic''.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
** ''Tris' Book'' teases us with her getting to confront her family for abandoning her, after discovering the truth about her magic, but the story about her father being about to die was a lie. And she never does get to do it.
** Rosethorn's subplot in ''Battle Magic'' to protect the greatest treasures of the Winding Circle has a hell of a build-up, but then we hardly get to see any of it and it doesn't seem to have any impact on the battle. It mostly just comes off as a cheap excuse to have Rosethorn not be there to protect Evvy during the battle.
* UnfortunateImplications: As discussed [[http://markreads.net/reviews/2015/07/mark-reads-cold-fire-chapter-14/ here]], Heluda’s statement in ''Cold Fire'' that children who are abused will inevitably grow up to be evil really could have stood to be more challenged by the narrative.
* ValuesDissonance: In ''Cold Fire'', the wearing of fur. Tamora Pierce herself wrote a note found at the end of the book explaining ''why'' the fur-wearing was necessary and reassuring her fans that in RealLife, she's very against the wearing of fur since we have ''much'' better ways to keep warm in modern times.
** Tris thinking that monarchy is preferably to any other forms of leadership in ''Shatterglass''. Granted, the only alternative she knows of is a "democracy" where only rich people have a say, bit still.
* VillainHasAPoint: Dimiter fer Holm, a noble who first attempts to force Sandry into marriage during ''The Will of the Empress''. He is a horrible person and a sore loser, but when he points out that the great mages at the Empress' court could easily bind Sandry's magic powers, he is right. [[spoiler:Two of them succeed at it during two separate abduction attempts, and in both cases (especially the first one) Sandry needs her friends' help to escape.]]
* WhatAnIdiot:
** Granted, she was in the midst of her FirstLove ''and'' the realization of her sexuality, but Daja expecting Rizu to drop her high-status position in the court of an Empress she feels a deep personal sense of love and gratitude towards, for a person she's known for about a month, is pretty silly.
** Okay, Jak, you want to tell Sandry how truly sorry you are for her mistreatment at the hands of your countrymen and how you so very much disagree with the abduction-marriage tradition. Drawing your sword to ''force'' your way into the house very shortly after she's just escaped from one such attempt is, perhaps, not the best gesture of good faith?
* WhatMeasureIsANonBadass: Although Pierce goes out of her way to deconstruct the RealWomenDontWearDresses trope, that doesn't stop fans from believing in it. Sandry, being the "girliest" protagonist (because TextileWorkIsFeminine, she loves fashion, and she's a countess), tends to get a lot of flak from the readers who don't think she's as cool as the other three despite her own ''numerous'' displays of badassery.
* TheWoobie: Many, ''many'' characters have their moments.
** Right in the first chapter of the first book, Sandry locked in a hidden room alone after her parents die and a mob ''tears her nursemaid apart right outside the door'', watching her lamp flame burn low and being terrified of the dark. She's there for two weeks, long enough that when a rescue party comes she thinks she's hallucinating, long enough that when she sees the light from their lamp she screams with pain. Later we find that she lay in a HeroicBSOD for weeks. For long after, she's afraid of the dark.
*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friedmds with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
** Also the first chapter of the first book, Daja Kisubo waking up on the ocean after her family died with the ship. She's remarkably good at holding herself together, but when she unknowingly uses her power to call over a chest with food and water she cries, and the narration baldly states that after all, she is young and doesn't want to die. Then her people cast her out because sole survivors are bad luck.
*** In ''Cold Fire'', she has such hero worship of Ben Ladradun and refuses to think much of the mounting oddities of his situation and involvement with the fires he fights, she makes him fireproof gloves… and then near the end of the book it all comes crashing down in the most painful way as she realizes how misplaced her trust was, [[spoiler:and that her beautiful invention, designed to help save lives, was happily used to kill more than thirty people]]. That entire chapter is just so painful.
** Lark's backstory is never really laid out in whole, but she was an acrobat in her youth until she got asthma and ended up living in slums for an unknown length of time. She is very aware of the desperation of great poverty. A NoodleIncident possibly tied to that is that she knows what ''horse urine'' tastes like.
** Sweet little Glaki in ''Shatterglass'' never had a father. Then she loses both her mother ''and'' her adopted mother all in a few weeks. Oh, and she's only ''five'' years old at this point. Poor kid.
** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since it would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
** Evvy, who was sold as a slave because a mere girl took up room and food that could have gone to her brothers. She actually watched her mother sell her. Then she ended up in the middle of a war-zone, suffered heavy PTSD, and [[spoiler:lost her oldest friends, her cats]].
** Rosethorn. [[spoiler:Horrifically abused by her father]], watched her best friend raped and killed by raiders as a teen, contracts the Blue Pox in ''Briar's Book'' and ''dies''. Brought back to life but is severely weakened (this is especially obvious in ''Battle Magic''), gets caught up in a war and ends up with severe PTSD. And these are only the more major things.
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
** Did the Trader Council make Daja a ''trangshi'' because they actually saw the future and knew it would be much better for the world? After all, without her there the other three would have died in the earthquake and not been there to stop any of the disasters that followed, all so that Daja could live what she quickly comes to realize would have been a far less fulfilling life.
** In ''Cold Fire'', exactly how much of Bennat Ladradun's interactions with Daja are deliberate manipulations, as opposed to genuinely wanting her to understand and sympathize with him? This applies especially to his offering a "guess" to the arsonist's motives that makes Daja think he's defending them.
* AngstWhatAngst: Gudruny Iarun. She spent decades married to a physically and verbally abusive husband (who she never wanted to marry in the first place), was callously refused help by Sandry's mother twice, and finally snuck into Sandry's house and hiding in a desperate attempt to have her marriage annulled. She's described then as looking permanently worn-out and disheveled, naturally, and one would expect that suffering many years of DomesticAbuse would leave her with many emotional issues — nope. As soon as Sandry hires her as a maid, Gudruny turns into a motherly mentor with no apparent ill effects from her mistreatment, with no mention of her having ever visited a mind-healer.[[note]]From conversations with Briar, it's implied they can magically treat mental disorders.[[/note]]
** She might just be a StepfordSmiler and she might have been seeing a mind healer off screen.
*** In which case there would have been no reason ''not'' to mention those things because Briar was being a StepfordSmiler (badly) and the girls were trying to get him to visit a mind-healer himself.
* AuthorsSavingThrow: To a whole other series. Pierce had gotten a lot of flack for writing a romance between a 30 year old man and his teenage student in the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'', and presenting it as nothing but good and desirable. So here she gives us Bennat's creepy obsession with Daja, showing that she fully understands how bad this kind of thing can be.
* BaseBreakingCharacter: Evvy, sort of. While she remains a popular character, fans are also getting a bit restless about her being a SpotlightStealingSquad and apparently the only one of the four students from the Opens series that Pierce has any interest in exploring further, to the point that she has her own first person narrated book, the only one the author has ''ever'' done.
* BrokenBase:
** ''Literature/TheCircleOpens'' has some criticism from fans due to the lack of interaction between the four Circle members that made the first series so much fun. Others argue that the characters it adds are just as interesting in their own right and the books open up the world of Emelan similar to the Tortall series.
** Some fans really weren't happy with the serious divisions in the group from ''Literature/TheWillOfTheEmpress'', as a large part of the series' appeal is the friendship between the four, and no matter how well justified, seeing them at odds is no fun to read about. Also, some fans take issue with Briar having gone through a major life-changing event between books that goes largely unexplained until two books later, making him harder to empathize with.
** After ''Literature/MeltingStones'', many fans turned on Rosethorn for being downright emotionally abusive towards Evvy, constantly flip-flopping in what she expects the poor girl to do and telling her outright that it's her fault Meryem ran away from the evacuation when it's demonstrably not. And yet, we're supposed to be on her side through the whole thing and cheer on Evvy ending up crushed under her will.
** There's a bit of a rift in the fanbase over whether Pierce should have written ''Literature/BattleMagic'' before the preceding two books, which take place after it. The pro side says that after four books of each main character on their own, it was important to see them all together again in the next one, and that our foreknowledge about what's going to happen in BM greatly adds to the experience. The anti side says that it's irritating to miss such a huge event in Briar and Evvy's lives at first and have no context for the way it changed their personalities, and it doesn't help that Pierce apparently changed her mind on some of the details before writing BM, making some of their recollections about it pretty nonsensical.
** ''Battle Magic'' also has some controversy over the far more prominent role played by gods and spirits, which many fans accuse of clashing with the setting as portrayed up until then, and feeling more like something that belongs in the Tortall series. Some of them also call UnfortunateImplications on this increased exoticism being played in an analogue to southeast Asian countries.
* CompleteMonster: The ''Literature/{{Circleverse}}'' has several monsters in it, particularly in the ''Circle Opens"'' books
** In ''Street Magic'', Lady Zenadia seems at first to be retired and a CoolOldLady, but is in reality an utterly bored and cruel sadist with no regard for the lives of others. Recruiting a teenaged street gang, she has them engage in deadly street wars [[ForTheEvulz for her amusement.]] Any members who displease her, she [[WouldHurtAChild strangles and buries in her garden for good fertilizer.]]
** In ''Magic Steps'', we have Alzena and Nurhar who murder members of a rival merchant family, the Rokats, getting away with it because they have addicted a mage (by the way, a child mutilated by pirates, possessing a terrifying magical power that has ruined his life ''before'' they met him) to a FantasticDrug so he will be utterly dependent on them. Upon attacking the family, the two make certain they kill the baby first, before [[WouldHurtAChild killing the little girl]], then their rival, then his wife in case she might be pregnant again. Alzena specifically saved Rokat until after he had seen his children die. It made it more fun.
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Frequently and ''awesomely''. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
* HilariousInHindsight: Daja's first appearance has her covered in salt, making her [[{{Twilight}} white and sparkling]].
* IdiotPlot: In ''Melting Stones'', Evvy and Rosethorn are given every single clue you could possibly want that a volcano is about to erupt, including what Evvy literally calls volcanic stones where they shouldn't be, but somehow it takes them almost half the book to figure it out, and the reveal is then written in a way to suggest the reader should be just as surprised.
* {{Moe}}: The [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091120201640/tamorapierce/images/2/27/Briar%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg Japanese]] [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090617053710/tamorapierce/images/5/58/Daja%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg book]] [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090524152629/tamorapierce/images/3/36/SB_Japanese.jpg covers]], but mostly [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090605163044/tamorapierce/images/b/b2/Tris%27s_Book_Japanese.jpg Tris.]] Incidentally, Daja seems to have turned into [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Katara]] in that last pic.
** The twins from ''Cold Fire'' also come off as Moe, Nia as the ShrinkingViolet variety and Jory as a {{Tsundere}}.
* {{Narm}}:
** The unusually hamfisted foreshadowing for [[spoiler:Yali's]] death in ''Shatterglass'', which may get you wondering why Pierce didn't also go with a flock of buzzards suddenly appearing.
** Rosethorn's "builders and destroyers" speech in ''Melting Stones'', an absurd piece of BlackAndWhiteMorality from an author who's usually pretty good at exploring moral gray areas.
** In ''Battle Magic'', Briar's face is described as turning "the colour of cheese". Um, you might want to be more specific there.
** At the end of ''Battle Magic'' it's explained that Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn will forget everything about the gods as part of the magical protection around the area. It feels exactly like Pierce reached this point and then suddenly realized how weird it would retroactively make the previous two books for that stuff to never be mentioned, so she spent a couple minutes coming up with an explanation to throw in. And not helping is that she'd already done the ''exact same thing'' in the Tortall series' own prequel story ''Mastiff''.
* ParanoiaFuel: Sandry's thread magic. Goes hand in hand with her whole HeartIsAnAwesomePower thing. Mess with her and she could murder you with the clothes on your back.
** Also, her backstory. She survived the smallpox epidemic because her nurse locked her in a small room, after walking into find her parents dead bodies in their bedroom, alone, in the dark after her oil lamp ran out of oil. She manages to discover her latent magical powers, but by the time she gets out of the room, everyone in the house is dead.
** Imagine managing to piss off the entire circle as a whole. Suddenly, you can no longer trust metal, thread, fire, plants, or even the air you breathe or the earth under your feet not to attack you.
* TheScrappy: Lady Zenadia is one of Pierce's least popular villains, thanks to her lack of any motivation for her monstrous actions beyond some vague "rich people are evil" pandering.
* SoOkayItsAverage: The general opinion on ''Melting Stones'', which is seen to suffer from what had by then become an extremely stock plot and characters for Tamora Pierce's writing.
* StrawmanHasAPoint:
** In ''Daja's Book'', the group meets an academic mage named Yarrun [[MeaningfulName Firetamer]] who is very resentful of famous mages like Niko. He's obnoxious and refuses to listen to Rosethorn's accurate assessment of the fire danger [[spoiler:and dies when he's too proud to accept help when she's proved right]], but he has a conversation with Daja in which he complains about how mages who see to "mundane" things like plumbing and food spoilage are scorned in favor of people with unusual or flashy specialties. Yarrun might be a pill but those things are, in fact, very important to society (see how long you let your toilet back up before you call the plumber), and "if other people can work their spells as you do and get the same results" is how scientific research in RealLife ''actually works''. Daja dismisses it as more bitterness.
*** Oddly enough, this is something that Niko tells the four, reversing it by saying that university mages learn to do fantastic things, but nobody can live without clothes, metal, plants, or weather.
*** In her defense, her calling it bitterness came from him saying she and her friends were "fortunate" and she's remembering how each of them had their lives ruined by their magic/in the process of discovering it. Plus, the people who get famous for without reasons aren't to blame for the system anymore than the people who unfairly lack acclaim, so bitterly resenting the famous mages is pretty petty.
*** ''Briar's Book'' actually seems to acknowledge it, in a subtle way. The whole plague only comes about because a mage of ''far'' lower standing than even Yarrun could hardly afford either food or rent. As such, she reluctantly dumps some magical waste instead of paying the cost for proper disposal, accidentally releasing a magical disease on the land.
** Briar meets with the ''mutabir'', or head of the City Watch, during ''Street Magic''. We're supposed to hate him, as does Briar, for acting so heartless about the problems of Chammur, and for wanting to use Evvy as a spy in Lady Zenadia's house. The thing is, everything the ''mutabir'' says is absolutely correct. For all Briar and Rosethorn may have saved one girl from poverty, there are thousands more they didn't, and no-one can save them all. If he gets rid of the current gangs, more will rise to take their places, as has always happened. He really can't pin a few murders of beggars and street orphans on one of the most powerful people in the city. And he is genuinely trying to clean up the corruption in the city; while using a child as a double agent in such a dangerous household is morally reprehensible, from his position it is the only way he can nail Zenadia for her crimes.
** During the final battle in ''The Will of the Empress'', [[WorthyOpponent Ishabal Ladyhammer]] taunts Sandry, Briar and Daja with "You cannot be so foolish as to think the powers of the world might allow you to pursue your own selfish desires all your days. Wake up, children. It is time to learn to live in the real world". The characters are not inclined to listen (especially as she is the one who [[spoiler: cursed Tris]] and dismiss her as haughty, [[SillyRabbitCynicismIsForLosers too cynical]] and ignorant of PowerOfFriendship, and narratively, [[spoiler: them subsequently beating Ishabal and (temporarily) depowering her]] seems to prove them right, painting her as a classical ThisCannotBe villain. But ultimately her taunting is correct: no matter how powerful the Circle is, they cannot take on the whole Namorn Empire. Sandry [[spoiler: being forced to sign over her lands, thus guaranteeing that the money from them stays in Namorn]] is indicative of this.
* TearJerker: One at the end of ''Briar's Book'' when [[spoiler: Rosethorn dies, and Briar follows her with all three girls providing an anchor at their own risk]].
** Tris and Keth in ''Shatterglass'' being brought before and shown [[spoiler: Yali's corpse]]. Even ''Chime'' cried!
*** Followed up with the scene where Tris holds the now-orphaned [[spoiler:Glaki]] as she cries, because she has no one else, and Tris remembers what that's like.
** In ''The Will of the Empress'', Rizu refuses to leave Namorn and come with Daja, thus breaking Daja's heart. Comparing the state Daja was left in with how happy she was with Rizu is enough to make anyone tear up.
** The deaths of [[spoiler: Evvy's cats]] in ''Battle Magic''.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
** ''Tris' Book'' teases us with her getting to confront her family for abandoning her, after discovering the truth about her magic, but the story about her father being about to die was a lie. And she never does get to do it.
** Rosethorn's subplot in ''Battle Magic'' to protect the greatest treasures of the Winding Circle has a hell of a build-up, but then we hardly get to see any of it and it doesn't seem to have any impact on the battle. It mostly just comes off as a cheap excuse to have Rosethorn not be there to protect Evvy during the battle.
* UnfortunateImplications: As discussed [[http://markreads.net/reviews/2015/07/mark-reads-cold-fire-chapter-14/ here]], Heluda’s statement in ''Cold Fire'' that children who are abused will inevitably grow up to be evil really could have stood to be more challenged by the narrative.
* ValuesDissonance: In ''Cold Fire'', the wearing of fur. Tamora Pierce herself wrote a note found at the end of the book explaining ''why'' the fur-wearing was necessary and reassuring her fans that in RealLife, she's very against the wearing of fur since we have ''much'' better ways to keep warm in modern times.
** Tris thinking that monarchy is preferably to any other forms of leadership in ''Shatterglass''. Granted, the only alternative she knows of is a "democracy" where only rich people have a say, bit still.
* VillainHasAPoint: Dimiter fer Holm, a noble who first attempts to force Sandry into marriage during ''The Will of the Empress''. He is a horrible person and a sore loser, but when he points out that the great mages at the Empress' court could easily bind Sandry's magic powers, he is right. [[spoiler:Two of them succeed at it during two separate abduction attempts, and in both cases (especially the first one) Sandry needs her friends' help to escape.]]
* WhatAnIdiot:
** Granted, she was in the midst of her FirstLove ''and'' the realization of her sexuality, but Daja expecting Rizu to drop her high-status position in the court of an Empress she feels a deep personal sense of love and gratitude towards, for a person she's known for about a month, is pretty silly.
** Okay, Jak, you want to tell Sandry how truly sorry you are for her mistreatment at the hands of your countrymen and how you so very much disagree with the abduction-marriage tradition. Drawing your sword to ''force'' your way into the house very shortly after she's just escaped from one such attempt is, perhaps, not the best gesture of good faith?
* WhatMeasureIsANonBadass: Although Pierce goes out of her way to deconstruct the RealWomenDontWearDresses trope, that doesn't stop fans from believing in it. Sandry, being the "girliest" protagonist (because TextileWorkIsFeminine, she loves fashion, and she's a countess), tends to get a lot of flak from the readers who don't think she's as cool as the other three despite her own ''numerous'' displays of badassery.
* TheWoobie: Many, ''many'' characters have their moments.
** Right in the first chapter of the first book, Sandry locked in a hidden room alone after her parents die and a mob ''tears her nursemaid apart right outside the door'', watching her lamp flame burn low and being terrified of the dark. She's there for two weeks, long enough that when a rescue party comes she thinks she's hallucinating, long enough that when she sees the light from their lamp she screams with pain. Later we find that she lay in a HeroicBSOD for weeks. For long after, she's afraid of the dark.
*** Before this, her parents travelled around so much she was never in one place long enough to make friends, and any time she tried, local nobles warned their children away from her based on her parents supposed oddity (preferring to travel rather than settle on their lands and attend court), and if she tried to make friedmds with local commoners children also never worked because they were all too suspicious of a noble child trying to befriend commoners. And even when they visited family, she had relatives of her own age, meaning she just got bored in the company of adult nobles. So Sandry pretty much had no real friends or family (emotionally distant parents) until she ended up in Winding Circle. No wonder she insists on seeing Vedris after his heart attack, he’s the only biological relative who was actually kind to her, showed affection for her, and she was actually happy to go live with after her parents died, even if he was happy for her to live and be educated at Winding Circle.
** Also the first chapter of the first book, Daja Kisubo waking up on the ocean after her family died with the ship. She's remarkably good at holding herself together, but when she unknowingly uses her power to call over a chest with food and water she cries, and the narration baldly states that after all, she is young and doesn't want to die. Then her people cast her out because sole survivors are bad luck.
*** In ''Cold Fire'', she has such hero worship of Ben Ladradun and refuses to think much of the mounting oddities of his situation and involvement with the fires he fights, she makes him fireproof gloves… and then near the end of the book it all comes crashing down in the most painful way as she realizes how misplaced her trust was, [[spoiler:and that her beautiful invention, designed to help save lives, was happily used to kill more than thirty people]]. That entire chapter is just so painful.
** Lark's backstory is never really laid out in whole, but she was an acrobat in her youth until she got asthma and ended up living in slums for an unknown length of time. She is very aware of the desperation of great poverty. A NoodleIncident possibly tied to that is that she knows what ''horse urine'' tastes like.
** Sweet little Glaki in ''Shatterglass'' never had a father. Then she loses both her mother ''and'' her adopted mother all in a few weeks. Oh, and she's only ''five'' years old at this point. Poor kid.
** Tris. She was shuffled from relative to relative, who all hated her because of her unidentified magical powers. She was mercilessly bullied by school-mates and family for years. When she went to Winding Circle she was able to find safety, but out of her adopted siblings, parents and teachers, she doesn't seem to have much luck. Apparently her every attempt at dating failed due to people making fun of her due to her looks, and practically every other mage hates her due to her incredible powers. She can't even use her magic for a traditional career, [[BlessedWithSuck since it would involve ruining weather systems and/or killing huge numbers of people]].
** Evvy, who was sold as a slave because a mere girl took up room and food that could have gone to her brothers. She actually watched her mother sell her. Then she ended up in the middle of a war-zone, suffered heavy PTSD, and [[spoiler:lost her oldest friends, her cats]].
** Rosethorn. [[spoiler:Horrifically abused by her father]], watched her best friend raped and killed by raiders as a teen, contracts the Blue Pox in ''Briar's Book'' and ''dies''. Brought back to life but is severely weakened (this is especially obvious in ''Battle Magic''), gets caught up in a war and ends up with severe PTSD. And these are only the more major things.
