Tempests and Slaughter
Tamora Pierce
Numair comes from a family that is delighted and bewildered by his brilliance at magery and academics. From being a lonely student, he finds himself befriended by Orzone the leftover prince and Varice, an attractive young woman who is a witch in the kitchen. As Orzone gets closer to the throne and Varice becomes more attractive, what will Numair find himself doing?
This has what could be called a ‘slow burn’. There’s no real action, and no real climax to it. There are hints at the Orzone behind the Emperor Mage but that’s about it. It’s like the first Harry Potter books where the focus was on learning, and let’s face it, those books were my favorites for that reason!
Let’s talk about sex. Generally Tamora Pierce talks about safe sex and some canoodling. In this novel she approaches Numair’s body changing as he hits puberty, and what this means for him. I actually found it quite awkward to read, and I wonder whether this was deliberate on the author’s part or just a facet of this novel that didn’t work.
I almost can’t believe that I didn’t purchase this at the beginning of last year, it’s been published for more than a year and I forgot to check! I haven’t been keeping up to date with authors that I used to follow avidly, mainly because I receive a lot of novels from publishers and I don’t really have a budget for buying novels (hello mortgage!).
I’ll eventually be purchasing this, probably once the other novels in the trilogy are published (I wouldn’t want them not to match!). When that happens I’ll be primed to read it again too. So four stars from me.
