Review: Circle of Magic, Sandry's Book

Novel: Circle of Magic #1 (Sandry’s Book)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Pages: 272
Genre: YA (Fantasy)



Sandry wants desperately to learn to spin and weave despite her noble birth; she finds that she can spin light into her threads. Tris comes from a family of merchants but has an uncanny feel for weather and hears voices on the winds. Briar, a former street urchin and thief, communicates with plants. Daja is a Trader, but metalworking calls her now. Sandry's Book focuses equally on these four children, all abandoned or orphaned and all equally unaware of being mageborn?gifted with a particular talent and magical abilities. The four meet at Discipline Cottage, part of Winding Circle Temple, where the powerful mage Niko has brought them to heal the wounds of their past and to learn to channel and control their abilities. Although the four have some conflicts with their new surroundings and with one another, they are united when misuse of magic at another temple puts everyone in mortal danger. A bit unfocused, the story features too many main characters with individual stories to tell and borrows too much from our own world to be surprising. The youngsters are appealing and the conflicts between them are logical and believable. However, while Daja's affinity for metals and Briar's for plants are well defined, it is harder to tell how Sandry will use her magical talent, or what Tris's abilities have to do with the crafts that are predominant throughout the book. In spite of its faults, this is an enjoyable fantasy for middle-grade readers, who will look forward to the next book in the series.

(By School Library Journal’s Susan L. Rogers)


(I will not be posting any spoilers! Only opinion for the sake of those of us who love to have our first look at a book be untainted by foreknowledge.)

I enjoy novels with magic and love when a novel has a message of hope. This novel is about four child/teens who all have unfortunate backgrounds or past life style and they are taught that their differences don’t make them worse than other, they make them better. That sometimes, knowing what it is like to be poor or unloved or feared can help you be kind to others, can help you be more than anyone ever would have expected of you, because you understand the feeling yourself and you can learn to be better than the people who made you feel that way.

This story has magic, learning of friendship and so much more. It has some of my favorite characters and if you don’t like one of the main characters, don’t worry there are four and all of them are given their fair attention. This specific novel is the start of these four individual’s journey. The primary of the four in each of the novels is in the title. This is Sandry’s novel and for my next post I will be reviewing the second book in the series, Tris’s Book.





Would I suggest you read it:

Yes! If you already love Tamora Pierce then this can open an entirely new world to you. If you are not already a Tamora Pierce fan then this novel may be able to change your mind.

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