Reading Tamora Pierce: 'The Immortals'

John Lennard

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Humanities eBooks
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847600370
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Reading
Tamora Pierce
The Immortals
Wild Magic
Wolf-Speaker
The Emperor Mage
The Realms of the Gods
John Lennard
Humanities-Ebooks
Genre Fiction Sightlines
2nd editionGenre Fiction Sightlines

Reading Tamora Pierce,
The Immortals

John Lennard


















HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks.co.ukCopyright
Text © 2007, 2013 John Lennard
The Author has asserted his right to be identifed as the author of this
Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988. First published as A Guide to Tamora Pierce: The Immortals
as an ebook in 2007 by Humanities-Ebooks LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril,
Penrith CA10 2JE. Published as a Kindle ebook with updated
bibliography and notes 2010. Second edition, retitled Reading Tamora
Pierce: The Immortals, with revisions and updating 2013.
Purchase of this work in Kindle format licenses the purchaser only
to download and read the work. No part of this publication may
otherwise be reproduced or transmitted or distributed without the prior
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This work is copyright. Making or distributing copies of this book
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would be liable to prosecution.
PDF ISBN 978-1-84760-037-0
Kindle ISBN 978-1-84760-230-5
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Your purchase of this ebook licenses you to read this work on-screen. No
part of this publication may be otherwise reproduced or transmitted or
distributed without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners
and the publisher. Making or distributing copies of this book would
constitute copyright infringement and would be liable to prosecution. Thank you
for respecting the rights of the author.This e-book is dedicated to the memory of my father,
Michael Briart Lennard
1922–1986
who let me read his books when I ran out of my own on holiday
and taught me more about them and the world than I can ever say,
but died before I could know him as an adult.
I believe that, despite a technology he would have hated,
he would like what it tries to do
for reading and for thinking about what you read.Contents
Part 1 ~ Notes 6
1.1 Tamora Pierce 6
1.2 The World of Tortall 8
1.3 Magic and Mythical Beasts 26
1.4 Interfering Gods 32
Part 2. Annotations 38
2.1 Wild Magic 38
2.2 Wolf-Speaker 60
2.3 The Emperor Mage 76
2.4 The Realms of the Gods 89
Part 3. Essay 105
Of Stormwings and Valiant Women: Reading
the Tortall books 105
Part 4. Bibliography 119
4.1 Works by Tamora Pierce 119
4.2 Works about Tce and Children’s Writing 122
4.3 Websites 124
A Note on the Author 125Part 1 ~ Notes
1.1 Tamora Pierce
Tamora Pierce was born in December 1954 in South Connellsville,
Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining area. Neither of her
parents’ families were well-off but her mother was studying towards a
degree and intended to teach, while her father worked for the telephone
company, so there were both a steady income and plenty of books
around. Tamora was the eldest child; sisters Kimberley (b.1960) and
Melanie (b.1961) followed, and there was a large extended family
who cared for and shared with one another. But there were also
tensions with and snobberies from her mother’s family, who were
classconscious and found her father’s family vulgar rather than warm.
In 1963 her father got a job in California and took his immediate
family west. For six years, with the 1960s in full swing, Pierce
grew up around San Francisco, where the district known as
HaightAshbury was at the centre of US hippy culture. Though young and
by her own account ‘geeky’, much liberalism rubbed off, especially
where traditional restrictions on women were concerned.
Homelife was diffcult, though, and it may partly have been as a defence
against the strain of living with her parents’ failing marriage that she The Immortals 7
began inventing stories initially fuelled by TV SF and drama. “I was
telling myself stories, but I didn’t begin to write them down until my
father caught me telling stories to myself one day as I did dishes. This
was in early 1966, I think. He suggested that I write a book instead
and even loaned me his typewriter. He also suggested an idea that
he knew I would like, because he shared books he liked with me: a
time travel story.” (TP, email to the author, 26 July 2013; quoted with
permission.) In 1965 Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had come out in
the US in paperback, and Pierce (led to it by a canny teacher) became
a serious fantasy reader and thinker. But in 1969 her parents’ marriage
ended and she moved with her mother back to Fayette County, and
genuine poverty.
Writing was Pierce’s great ambition, but she ran into a severe
writer’s block in tenth grade, lasting several years, so when in 1972
she went to Penn State University on full scholarship it was to read
psychology with a plan of working with teenagers. She graduated in
1977 with a general degree, diffculty with statistics having forestalled
psychology, and moved to central New York, before living in Idaho
for a while with her father. The writer’s block had lifted at college,
and Pierce had taken some writing courses. Stories fowed again, and
by 1976–7 she had completed a long fantasy novel for adult readers,
but was unable to get it published. She did sell occasional stories,
but for income in Idaho worked as a Housemother, cannibalising
bits of her novel for stories to tell the girls she looked after. Moving
to Manhattan, she held jobs in a literary agency and later a radio
production company, but everything began to change when an agent
suggested turning the long fantasy novel for adults into a quartet for
teenagers.
Alanna: The First Adventure came out in 1983 and its sequels
followed, completing the quartet under the general title ‘Song of the
Lioness’. The books were well-received and, after marriage to Tim
Liebe in 1985, Pierce began astonishingly to develop the world she
had created. Two further quartets (‘The Immortals’, 1992–6, ‘The
Protector of the Small’, 1999–2002) were followed by a duology
(‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, 2003–04), a trilogy (‘The Provost’s
Dog, 2006–11), and a collection of stories (Tortall and Other Lands,
2011). Amid all this Pierce also created a second world in her 8 Reading Tamora Pierce
‘Circle’ books, of which two quartets and two free-standing novels
have appeared since 1997. She has also co-written with Tim Liebe a
Marvel graphic novel, White Tiger (2007). The grand total to date is
27 novels in 28 years, plus the collected stories, that together have
won Pierce a formidable international following and wide praise.
Pierce has no children, but a lively extended family of nephews,
nieces, great-nephews and the like provide an audience (as well
as many distractions). She and her husband also keep a fair-sized
menagerie of cats and birds, and in 2006 moved out of Manhattan
to upstate New York, where there are more trees, space, and cats to
rescue.
1.2 The World of Tortall
1.2.1 The Five Tortall Series
The world of Tortall was created in three quartets, a duology, and a
trilogy. (The duology is almost as long as the quartets, and Pierce
has thanked J. K. Rowling for making longer books for young adults
acceptable.) There is also a collection of short stories, all but fve of
which are tales of Tortall. In order of publication, these are:
Song of the Lioness
Alanna: The First Adventure (1983)
In the Hand of the Goddess (1984)
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986)
Lioness Rampant (1988)
The Immortals
Wild Magic (1992)
Wolf-Speaker (1994)
The Emperor Mage (1995)
The Realms of the Gods (1996)
The Protector of the Small
First Test (1999)
Page (2000)
Squire (2001)The Immortals 9
Lady Knight (2002)
The Daughter of the Lioness
Trickster’s Choice (2003)
T’s Queen (2004)
The Provost’s Dog
Beka Cooper: Terrier (2006)
Beka Cooper: Bloodhound (2009)
Beka Cooper: Mastiff (2011)
Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales (2011)
Song of the Lioness deals with the education and early adventures
of Alanna of Trebond & Olau, the frst woman in Tortall for more
than a century to become a knight. Despite the magic in this world,
a Victorian stupidity about women being incapable has set in, and to
undertake her training as a Page and Squire she has to disguise
herself as a boy. With the help of her skills, dedication, magical talent,
and the friends she makes, plus the blessing of the Goddess, she is
knighted, and forestalls the usurpation of the Tortallan throne by the
King’s brother Roger—a very powerful mage and the main villain of
the quartet.
In the later books Alanna travels as a knight, visiting the desert
tribes of the Bazhir and winning their respect both with arms and
magic. Her greatest adventure takes her to distant lands and gains
for Tortall the fabled ‘Dominion Jewel’, that can secure a state’s
prosperity or lock fast a tyrant’s grip. Roger thus also desires the
Jewel, and summons an earthquake to help him get it; he is eventually
defeated and killed, but only at great cost to the land. Alanna acquires
an immense reputation, the nickname ‘the Lioness of Tortall’, and a
position as King’s Champion.
Alanna’s growth to maturity means a growth into sexuality—
not easy for a woman in disguise, nor afterwards for a knight both
notorious and clearly trained to kill. For most of the quartet the love
interest is divided between (i) Jonathan of Conté, heir to the Tortallan
throne, who trained with Alanna, discovered her secret, and takes
her virginity, but must in the end marry for politics, not love; and 10 Reading Tamora Pierce
(ii) George Cooper, of very humble birth but considerable power in
the underworld, eventually becoming ‘the Rogue’, King of Tortall’s
thieves and hard men. Though lacking Jonathan’s royal status George
has a kind