Tortall & Other Lands

Tamora Pierce (author)

Omnibus, Scholastic, USA: 2010; 370pp

ISBN: 9781862919167

Genres: adventure, fantasy, short stories

Issues: change, choices, gifted, identity, tolerance

If you haven't yet read any of Tamora Pierce's writing, this is a great place to start. Best known for her novels, in Tortall & Other Lands, Pierce demonstrates her experience as a writer. Each story is a gem, cut and polished to shine brightly, showing the clear lines of character development pushing the plots forward.

While there are some characters that will be familiar to fans (Aly & Nawat; the darkings; Daine & Kitten), mostly these stories are independent of Pierce's novels, although the majority are set in the same lands. Each explores issues that are often at the heart of Pierce's writing – the role of women in their society and what happens when they challenge those roles; the relationship between animals and humans; life-changing experiences and the choices people make as a result of them; giftedness and the difficulties that can bring; the need to conform versus the need to be oneself.

Pierce likes to stretch her readers, make them think and in Elder Brother and The Hidden Girl, Pierce looks at two different perspectives on being a woman in a world where religion says you must be anonymous. Not all are set in the medieval times of most of Pierce's novels; Huntress takes worship of the Moon Goddess into the twenty-first century and Testing is based on Pierce's early work as a house-mother for wards of state.

Highly recommended.

Same Author: The Lioness Quartet; Trickster's Queen, Bloodhound