Terrier by Tamora Pierce ★★★★☆

Tamora Pierce at her best!

Fiction – YA – High Fantasy/Mystery

Age Range: 12 and up Grade Level: 7 and up

582 pages

Publication Date:  October 24th 2006

Beka Cooper #1

Literary Awards:  Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Children's Literature (2012), West Australian Young Readers' Book Award (WAYRBA) for Older Readers (2009), ALA's Top Ten Best Books Nominee for Young Adults (2007)

The lower city of Corus is rookie, Beka Cooper’s, new beat with the Provost’s Guard.  Even with her magical powers of hearing the voices of the dead she will have to rely on her friends and her own tenacity to “dog” after the Shadow Snake, a villain who steals and sometimes kills children for what they want,  and investigate who is killing for fire opals.

I have reread this book many times and still never tire of it.  The diary format really works well for this engrossing double crime mystery.  And I have to say I admire Ms. Pierce for branching out. The introduction written by other characters creates a great back story and links it to the other Tortall books.  And as a story about underbelly of Tortall as opposed to the nobles, the place and characters come alive through Beka’s eyes with a gritty honesty.  Beka Cooper is a realistic heroine even with her magical abilities.  She is strong, has integrity, observant of her surroundings and above all compassionate.  The secondary charaters like; Clary Goodwin, Mattes Tunstall, Pounce, and Rosto the Piper are all in themselves well rounded out and life like.

This is Tamora Pierce at her best.  A well-constructed story, fantastically balanced between plot, characters and action with a polished writing style I truly envy. It is exciting without losing the characters and well layered.  Each scene adds some aspect of the story, whether it be character or plot.  This story while nicely woven into Tortall’s history, by itself is rich and textured with a mythology somewhat branching out from the other books.  It could definitely be read as a stand-alone.  The glossary extras at the end plus the map at the beginning really helps ( I know I’ve said it before , but I will say it again, I wished more sci-Fi and fantasy books had them).  Frankly, I can’t think of anything that could improve it.