Reviews for Emperor Mage (The Immortals Series #3)

The average rating for Emperor Mage (The Immortals Series #3) based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-02-22 00:00:00 Paul Ondo Last month I read Tempests and Slaughter, Tamora Pierce's prequel book about the mage Numair's younger days, studying magic at a Carthak university. I handed that one off to my 15 year old son, who read it and then promptly went to his school library and checked out the entire IMMORTALS series. When he brought Emperor Mage home the other day, I snagged it from him when he was finished so that I could remind myself of what happened with Prince Orzorne, the lovely Varice, and other Carthaki characters that I met in Tempests and Slaughter and had pretty much completely forgotten because I read this book so very long ago. The nice thing about it was that it was like reading this book for the very first time - I remembered absolutely nothing about the plot! So here it is: Fifteen year old animal mage Daine and her mentor, now 29 year old Numair, travel with a delegation from Tortall to Carthak, to try to negotiate a peace treaty with the Emperor Mage, Orzorne (who's come a long way from the teenager he was in Tempests and Slaughter). Daine is along because Emperor Orzorne loves animals, and his menagerie of exotic birds is sickening and dying for some unknown reason. But even though the Tortall delegation doesn't trust Orzorne in the slightest, he still may have some surprises planned for them. Of course, he doesn't take Daine's wild magic into account, so there are likely to be some surprises all the way around. This is a middle grade book and it struck me as a little simplistic at first, but by the end I was totally sucked in. 4+ stars. Full review to come.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-10-01 00:00:00 Stanley Wagner I've been doing some thinking and have come to a conclusion that, I suppose, should have been obvious a long time ago: I connect to Tamora Pierce's characters better than I connect to pretty much any other characters. They get under my skin, in my blood, into my heart; I see through their eyes so easily it astounds me. I've read this series more times than I can remember, but I still feel the same intensity that I recall from the first time - and the last few chapters of this book still have a horrible kick in the gut in store for me, even if I know it's coming. I almost cried, and I hardly ever cry at books. That, I think, is Pierce's true mastery. It's not her fantastic plotting, or her pacing, or the way she uses magic and integrates it into the societies she builds. It's not the vividity of different cultures. It's not even the sharp, wry dialogue that I adore. What makes her one of my favorite authors is the way her characters are so very human, developed and flawed so that I can live through them and almost breathe with them and I don't have to think about it. When I am reading a Tamora Pierce book, Tortall is the real world and woe betide any interruptions. This particular book can be described in two words: Fucking Epic. The Immortals Quartet grows vastly in scale here. As a veteran of the Lioness Quartet, I know that in Tortall the question is not whether or not the gods are real but how long it will take one of them to show up, and this is the book in which at least one of them becomes a driving force. In a big way. Okay, so sue me; I really like the Graveyard Hag. She's got spunk. Also, old goddesses for the win! There aren't nearly enough of them in mythology or fiction. (Off the top of my head all I can think of is Elli, the Norse goddess of old age who arm-wrestled Thor and won.) Even Pierce's deities are human, something that becomes abundantly clear in the fourth book. But I digress. There's really not much to say about this book without spoiling the ending because all that is wonderful about it ties directly into the ending. So I'm going to waste a little more of your time analyzing one scene, one of my favorites in the book: when Daine and Prince Kaddar go to the archery yard and Daine beats all the Carthaki nobles in archery. First of all, we get this: "Women aren't up to the discipline of military life." "You must tell Lady Alanna that sometime. I'd do it from a distance." Knowing the sexism that Alanna had to fight to win her shield, that little exchange always makes me grin. It might be easy to lose sight of the cultural revolution Tortall has undergone in a relatively short period of time, but Alanna is a distinct reminder of that. (And Kel, but she hasn't shown up yet.) The best thing about this scene is that instead of using it to show how stupid and sexist these young men are, Pierce makes it rather more pleasant: Daine impresses them all with her archery skills, and they immediately accept her, almost as one of their own. They're not hopeless bigots, and they're not haughty and dismissive of her as an aberration. It's very clear that these are young men raised to believe certain things, but still not so old they think what they were taught is the one and only truth. It's not black and white. So yeah. This book is awesome. And I'm going to go start Realms of the Gods now.