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A series of young adult fantasy novels by Tamora Pierce which follows the Four Temperament Ensemble of Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar as they train to become mages in the independent duchy of Emelan.
- Circle of Magic follows four children who are all outcasts with different elemental powers as they train at a magical academy and learn about their abilities, while various disasters lead them to consider each other as family.
- Sandry's Book, known elsewhere as The Magic in the Weaving
- Tris's Book, known elsewhere as The Power in the Storm
- Daja's Book, known elsewhere as The Fire in the Forging
- Briar's Book, known elsewhere as The Healing in the Vine
- The Circle Opens describes their journeys into the outside world as they find apprentices of their own to train in their arts.
- Magic Steps
- Street Magic
- Cold Fire
- Shatterglass
- Will of the Empress reunites the foursome as they face the titular Empress.
- Melting Stones follows the story of Evvy, Briar's student in Street Magic, as she and Rosethorn investigate the mysterious death of plants in the Battle Islands, concurrent with Will of the Empress
Forthcoming books will cover Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy's adventures in analogue-China on the far side of the world, and Tris as a student at a university for mages.
Tropes found in this series include:
- Anti Magic: In Magic Steps.
- Berserk Button: Individual ones vary, but the four main characters have one in common: if you mess with their family (adopted or blood), their teachers, or their students, prepare yourself for a whuppin'.
- Big Friendly Dog: Little Bear.
- Blessed With Suck: Tris's magic was 100% responsible for her miserable childhood. Even once she's an adult, people are freaked out by it, and she has to deal with hearing voices and seeing things when she doesn't want to. Zhegorz got it even worse — he was driven insane by a combination of hearing and seeing things on the wind, being mistaken for insane because he was hearing and seeing things on the wind, and being "treated" for his half-existent insanity.
- Body Horror: Do not activate any one of the four main characters' berserk buttons. Some deaths include being torn and cannibalized by plants, being burned alive from the inside out, and having certain body parts violently ripped away.
- Complete Monster: One in each of the Circle Opens books:
- In Street Magic, Lady Zenadia, who takes a teenage street gang under her wing and uses them vicariously to fight deadly gang wars just for the hell of it (she's bored with her retirement), while members who displease her get strangled and buried in her garden for fertilizer.
- In Magic Steps, Alzena and Nurahar, who murder members of a rival merchant family, getting away with it because they have a mage who works with "unmagic" to hide them... a child mage in whom they've cultivated a drug addiction so he'll be totally dependent on them, to the point where he's suicidal and effectively soulless.
- In Cold Fire, Ben Ladradun, who secretly sets the fires he puts out, because he likes being hero-worshipped.
- In ''Shatterglass', the nameless murderer, who kills innocent women and displays their bodies to mess with the oppressive class structure of his society — never mind that the women are victims of the same system and never did a thing to him.
- Contrived Coincidence: Okay, without it there wouldn't be a series. But seriously, what were the odds that four mages of unheard-of power were all born around the same time, all lost their parents in some way as they grew up, while meanwhile their magic — even in its more ordinary aspects — was somehow missed by everybody who might have noticed it, until they all just happened to discover it at the same time — and Niko, luckily, had scryed that this would happen, decided to follow up on it, and went around the world collecting them. Not to mention that in Sandry's, Daja's and probably Briar's cases, he also happened to be just in time to save their lives. Go figure, eh?
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Frequently and awesomely. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
- Fainting Seer: Zhegorz.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Emelan seems to be Mediterranean/southern European. The other small countries surrounding them are the rest of Europe; Namorn is Russia and Tharios is Greece (with the caste system borrowed from India). Sotat and nearby countries are west/central Asia. Yanjing is China.
- Fantasy Pantheon: One of the few examples where the actual existance of the gods is ambiguious.
- Fetish Fuel: At some point or another in the Opens quartet, all four of our heroes use their magic to restrain people.
- Briar restrains an assailant with rose thorns(heh). Then he notices that the girl being held is more afraid of the roses than the thorns. Turns out she's allergic. By the time she leaves the scene, she's sneezing like crazy. (Yes, that's an actual fetish.) Of course there's the fact that plants adore him, and vinelike plants twine around his body to show it. He's also known to carry several knives on himself at all times.
- Tris is somewhere between a Deadpan Snarker and Emotionless Girl. And she's a redhead. Her powers include lighting, wind, wave, heat, and a few others.
- Sandry has a habit of acting like a completely normal girl, until you threaten someone she cares about. Then she gets all...in-control, reminding you of her title and power. It's mentioned that she wrapped several people up in thread and cloth "cocoons", just because she was trying to reach her uncle.
- Also keep in mind that her power allows her to control your clothes.
- Also, remember that scene where Sandry used her magic to strip a group of armed men, leaving them stark naked in the middle of nowhere?
- Daja is a somewhat tomboyish girl whose powers lie in fire and the manipulation of metal. A blacksmith, specifically, which means she's all muscle-y. Also, she likes girls. Whether that's "instead of" or "in addition to" has yet to be revealed. The living metal that grows from her hand is definitely another source, and do note that it can mimic the properties of skin and fuse onto body parts. Extra limbs anyone? Extra penises anyone?
- There's also the mental link the four share. They can close and open it at will, and can tell what the others are doing, if they choose to "broadcast", anywhere within miles.
- Freudian Excuse: Ben Ladradun in Cold Fire.
- Friend To All Living Things: If there's a such thing as a plant version of this, Briar is it. Check out the plants' reaction to him when he first enters Berenene's greenhouses.
- His student, Evvy, takes this one step further by being a friend to rocks.
- Good Is Not Nice: Tris. When her student asks her if she's really nice during Shatterglass, she actually blushes.
- Green Thumb: Briar's type of magic.
- Honor Before Reason: Evvy in Melting Stones when she returns to the volcanic island to rescue the little girl she had scared into running off at an earlier point.
- Magic Dance: In Magic Steps, the power exhibited by the young mage boy Sandry finds.
- A Man Is Not A Virgin: Briar (as of Empress.) So, so much.
- Nakama: The defining relationship of the four protagonists, despite it having been created by magic and their often complaining about each other's flaws; they themselves, following the language of their world, describe their relationship as that of siblings, or if you press them as foster-siblings. The Will of the Empress arguably lampshades this by forcing the four to examine what exactly their relationship means to them.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: In Cold Fire, it turns out that the fire proof suit Daja makes out of living metal for Ben allows him to start even more fires in the city, since HE was the arsonist they had all been hunting. It also allows him to kill his domineering mother by (it's implied) burning her alive. Squick.
- Not Good With People: Rosethorn! Also Briar, to a lesser extent.
- Superpower Lottery: Tris. Girl has an insane amount of power, able to control all kinds of weather, plus tap into earthquakes and volcanoes, and can perform academic magic, and has the extremely rare ability of scrying the wind.
- And then has to develop the self-control of a Buddhist monk in order not to kill everyone around her, and suffers like all hell for being able to scry the winds. Between the reaction from other mages and the constant headaches and nausea, it's bordering on Blessed With Suck territory.
- Also: No job prospects. Fighting makes her sick and she doesn't really have enough control to do anything else.
- The Power Of Friendship: Played straight in the first four Circle of Magic books then Double Subverted in Will of the Empress.
- Sibling Yin Yang: Jory and Nia from Cold Fire
- Suddenly Sexuality: Very debatably. Daja realizes she likes girls in Empress. It's also mentioned that one of their female teachers is bisexual, and the other an outright lesbian. Though that's even more debatable, as only one of the four teachers had even had their sexuality referred to at all up to that point. (Ladies love cool Frostpine.)
- Throughout Circle of Magic, Lark refers to Rosethorn as "my love" and "dear", and is more or less the only adult Rosethorn has more than a professional relationship with. Reading Briar's Book with a romantic link between them in mind really does fit in pretty neatly. This troper always thought it was a nicely-done Getting Crap Past The Censors, and hasn't even read Empress.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The Booklist summary on the Amazon.com page for Empress revealed the plot twist that Daja likes girls. Surprise!
- There was also the map at the front of the book that loudly announced that Shan kidnaps Sandry.
- Unstoppable Rage: Don't piss Tris off.
- Kidnap Briar's student Evvy and have him find out you've been using people as cheap and easy fertilizer, and he'll tear your assassin to pieces with thorny vines. A little later, Evvy drops a floor on her kidnapper.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: While he quickly nosedives into Complete Monster territory, Ben Ladradun in Cold Fire initially sets his fires to convince the city officials that firefighters are necessary.
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