WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT - The Circle Opens?

MAGIC STEPS UK coverThis quartet picks up the lives of Sandry, Briar, Daja and Tris four years after the events of The Circle of Magic quartet. The four are out on their own for the first time. The first book, MAGIC STEPS, is about Sandry. She's living at Duke's Citadel, following the duke's heart attack six weeks before the book opens. Her three friends have left Winding Circle for a time in the company of their teachers, leaving Sandry and Lark on their own. Now Sandry discovers Pasco Acalon, the son and grandson of two cop families (known as "harriers" in Summersea). Pasco's twelve. He knows he would rather dance than do anything else; he also knows that when he is old enough, he is expected to become a harrier like his parents, and sisters, and cousins, and grandparents.... What he does not know is what Sandry can see the first time she watches him dance: Pasco has magic, magic that he works by dancing.

Like many people before him, Pasco will learn how easy it is to tell Lady Sandrilene fa Toren "no" when she says in her softly earnest way, "I really must insist." And both of them will learn what magic can do, as ruthless assassins cloaked in unknown power begin to kill off one of Summersea's richest families--adults and children alike. (Click here to read a sample from the first volume, MAGIC STEPS.)

STREET MAGIC US HardcoverSTREET MAGIC is the second book of The Circle Opens, one that revolves around Briar and his first mage-student, a stubborn, wily street girl named Evvy. Briar meets her in Chammur, a city far to the west of Emelan, a stop on his and Rosethorn's journey east. Briar's cruising one of the city's biggest markets when he sees a girl polishing stones and crystals, causing their innate magic that's in them to flare. She runs when Briar asks her how she does it. When Briar tells Rosethorn, he discovers an unpleasant fact of mage life: unless he can find another stone mage to teach Evvy, he must instruct her in the basics. Of course, to teach her or introduce her to the only stone mage in Chammur, Briar first must catch her. Evvy, a former slave and veteran street kid, knows Chammur and its secrets very well.

Soon Evvy and Briar are at odds with a local street gang, one which has been adopted by a noblewoman who wants her gang to be the most important in the city. To that end the Lady will scheme for them, give them weapons, and exert herself to get control of Evvy--as a stone mage the girl will be able to find hidden gems in houses the gang means to rob. In dealing with her, the gang itself, and Chammur's other stone mage, Briar is forced to review what he wants from life, and how he wants himself, and his exasperating new student, to live. (Click here to read a sample from the second volume, STREET MAGIC.) (Click here to read Tammy's note regarding continuity following STREET MAGIC, and before THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS and MELTING STONES.)

COLD FIRE UK coverCOLD FIRE is the third book of The Circle Opens quartet. In it, Daja and Frostpine have journeyed to Namorn in the far north, learning different techniques of metal-working along the way. Namorn is a choice Frostpine bitterly regrets once winter sets in, but at least they are comfortably housed with two old friends of his and their children. Daja is the one to discover there is undetected magic in the Bancanor household. Unlike Briar and Sandry, Daja has no trouble finding teachers for the Bancanors' twin daughters, Niamara (Nia), whose magic is with carpentry and woodwork, and Jorality (Jory), whose magic is with cooking, both fairly common forms of magic. The problem is that because the twins' new teachers run large, noisy shops, Daja gets to teach them the meditation that is the key to their control over their magic. As she struggles with that, she also makes friends with a local hero, Bennat Ladradun. After losing his wife and children in one of the city's many fires, Ben goes to an expert in fire to learn how it works and how to fight it. Now he's home, teaching what he's learned to fire brigades on Kugisko's many islands. He and Daja like each other from the start, which makes them natural allies when they are brought together at a fire that results from an act of arson. Other fires come after it, with heartbreaking results. Daja struggles to help Ben fight the blazes even as she teaches the twins to meditate, works to shape fireproof gloves for Ben (with an eye to making a complete living metal suit for him by spring), and learns to skate. As the arsonist's fires become more serious and deadly, Daja is plunged into the heart of a search for a monster. (Click here to read a sample from the third volume, COLD FIRE.)

SHATTERGLASS is the fourth book of The Circle Opens quartet. Here, Tris and Niko have journeyed far to the south, to the city of Tharios, famed for its glassmakers and the site of a conference on visionary magics which Niko is to attend. From the very beginning Tris is pitchforked into an alien culture, where an entire group of people known as the prathmuni who perform the city's dirtiest work are socially invisible, and where death is regarded as pollution which must be erased as soon as it's discovered. This makes it very hard for people to investigate when a serial killer begins to kill the entertainers who live and work in the district called Khapik, leaving their bodies in steadily more visible places. The killer has claimed five victims already when Tris encounters Kethlun Warder, a journeyman glassmaker from Namorn who has fled south to reclaim his life. A year before Keth was hit by lightning, half-crippling him and making him clumsy with his craft. It is Tris who informs him that he is now a mage, on the day his attempt to blow glass draws in magic from all around him to produce a living glass dragon. After a slight misunderstanding--Keth tries to kill the dragon with metal tongs; Tris shocks him with a bit of lightning to stop him--Keth realizes that this strange girl has just explained why he's been unable to do good work for the past year. He goes in search of a glass mage to teach him his craft, only to be told that since his glass magic is infused with lightning, which makes it both stronger and more unpredictable. Fortunately, the mage Niko who Keth meets at this point reassures Keth that there is in fact a rare, living master of lightning magic in Tharios. Niko takes him to meet the mage who is to be his new teacher, who is none other than the crotchety girl he disagreed with so vehemently.

One of Keth's accidents with glass blowing is a globe that, when the lightning that fills it clears, holds within it a newly murdered entertainer. This discovery brings Keth and Tris into the orbit of Dema, a police mage who has been assigned to the killings. Together the three of them work with Keth's magic, racing the clock in the attempt to create a clear globe that will show them not the killer's work, but the killer's face. (Click here to read a sample from the fourth volume, SHATTERGLASS.) (Click here for a SHATTERGLASS Glossary.)

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