Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce

Review of Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce, The Circle Reforged book 4. In Battle Magic a visit to the empirical palace turns into a gilded cage. Battle Magic is the darkest of Tamora Pierce’s young adult novels.

My review from 2013 of Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce

Title: Battle Magic
Author: Tamora Pierce
Series: The Circle Reforged, book 3
Genre: Fantasy, young adult
Content warning: War, torture
Themes: War, grief

I adore Tamora Pierce and I am yet to read a book by her that where I did not find something to like, so this review is probably a bit squeeing.

World building and magic system

Emelan is my favourite of Pierce’s two universes, because I feel that the worldbuilding was deeper from book one and I like the magic system better. The magic system is simply more interesting and original. The mages using ambient magic have so many neat tricks up their sleeves and makes me want to make a mage in my next roleplaying campaign so I can steal those ideas. The cultures in the Emelan universe borrows heavily from real world cultures which leans the world depth without the need for exposition.

The other reason I like the Emelan books better is, that they have multiple point of view in each series and the characters generally feel more fleshed out. There is also greater diversity in whom those point of view characters are.

The characters and story structure

Battle Magic is the first of Pierce’s books that uses the multiple points of views in a really active way. We jump back and forth between Rosethorn (a middle aged woman!), Evvy (12 year old asian girl) and Briar (16 year old boy). The narrative have two young adult perspectives, an adult perspective, two female and a male. This makes for really interesting storytelling especially when the story jump from physical space to physical space between the perspectives. However this does have the side effect of not dragging me so deeply into the characters emotions as I would normally be in a Pierce book. Despite the jumps in point of view, I was never annoyed by wanting to get back to my favourite point of view – which is often the case.

There are some really nasty parts of Battle Magic and I do not think I would recommend it to the youngest parts (torture and war) of Pierce normal audience. Those parts does feel a bit more bearable by the fact that we know from later books that our three protagonists will heal with time, even if they never completely recover.

Battle Magic are full of very strong emotions and deals with the subject of grief quite a bit. The descriptions are short but vivid so that I felt myself transported into the book. Because of the hints and bits and pieces that Tamora Pierce has put into the books that happens after this book (but was published before) we know that a few pretty horrible things will happen – this adds to the growing tension in the book. For the first third of the book, nothing bad or really major happens, but you know it will which adds to the tension and makes you view every little thing that happens in a darker light.

Over all I really liked Battle Magic and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who liked other books in the Emelan universe. However I do not think it is her best book or my favourite and it does definitely not stand on its own. Which is why it “only” gets four stars from me.

Battle Magic is another great Tamora Pierce book. Full of strong emotions, beautiful travels so vivid you feel yourself transported and a growing sense of tension building up over the book because it is a prequel to later books. Recommend it to anyone who liked other books in the Emelan universe.

The stats: Battle Magic

Published: 2013 by Scholastic Press
Length: 464 pages
Read: October 10 to 13, 2013

Author: Female, white, USA
The protagonists: Briar: Male, teenager, mage, ex-thief
Evvy: Female, 12 years old, PoC, mage student
Rosethorn: Female, middle aged, teacher, queer

This review was originally posted: October 13, 2013. Updated and edited July 1, 2023