Terrier

published	October 23rd 2007 by Random House Books for Young Readers
first published	2006
binding	Paperback
isbn	0375838163 (isbn13: 9780375838163)
ebook
pages	608
description	Tamora Pierce</i> has been creating strong, appealing heroines for teen fantasy fans for years, creating 2 main universes to house her multiple ...more [close] Tamora Pierce</i> has been creating strong, appealing heroines for teen fantasy fans for years, creating 2 main universes to house her multiple series. With Terrier, Pierce returns to the Tortall universe (home to her Song of the Lioness, Immortals, Protector of the Small, and Daughter of the Lioness series). Want to learn more? Read an exclusive essay from Tamora Pierce below. --Daphne Durham <p clear="all"> <b class="h1">An Essay from Tamora Pierce</b> Sixteen-year-old Beka Cooper lives far removed from knights, palaces, and the nobility. Her world revolves around thieves, beggars, taverns, and the lowest of the low. She's a trainee for the Provost's Guard—a rookie cop, in a world where a cop makes her own name based on her personality, her attitude toward money, and her love of the law. Beka means to prove that she is out to make her mark in this hard and physical world. She does face a large obstacle. She's shy. Painfully shy. Left to her own devices, she would have no friends. It's hard for her to talk to people she doesn't know. It's a problem for the Guards who train her, a real problem for Beka—unless she can figure out that a uniform is a kind of costume, one she can hide behind. One that will make her a more outspoken person. It will help a lot if people come to realize that under her shyness is a clever, determined young woman. It will help even more if she can make friends who can give her good advice. Luckily, she has one such friend living with her in her slum apartment: a purple-eyed black cat named Pounce. He can make himself understood in human speech if he wishes to. He's capable of doing weirdly intelligent things to help his young companion Beka. With Pounce to assist her, Beka cannot have an ordinary career. Beka tells her own story in a journal that she keeps from her very first day as a Puppy. The Guards are dubbed "Dogs" in her time and their trainees are called "Puppies." In its pages she writes of her days with her training Dogs, the pair who are to teach her what they know of survival on the streets in the city's toughest slum. Both are veterans. Tunstall is an easygoing, funny man who can be a little crazy in a fight. Goodwin is a small, tough woman who is opposed to Beka's presence at the beginning, a hard Dog and a smart one. They take charge when Beka brings them word of two vicious sets of crimes. Like everyone else in Beka's life, her partners find out that once Beka gets a case in her teeth, she hangs onto it like a terrier until it's been solved. I have all kinds of reasons why I went to the past of the Alanna books. In part I wanted to show how present-day Tortall came to be. I also knew George's fans would welcome any kind of return to the Lower City, even if it wasn't the Lower City of his time. I wanted to get away from the courts and nobility, the setting for so many of the Tortall books thus far. Since I didn't want to show any of the characters I've come to love as being old or even dead, I couldn't write books in the future of the current Tortall. I turned to the past, and I'm pretty sure my readers will be glad I did! --Tamora Pierce <p clear="all"> [close]
date added	06-08-07 edit book

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Samantha rated it:

(review of isbn 037581468X)

05/26/08

bookshelves: favorites---

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Samantha by: nada
recommends it for: EVERYONE!!!

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Without a doubt her best book ever!

I'm noticing an odd trend in my reading, but this one again is one not for the light of stomach or easily squeamish.

Here's what I wrote right after I finished reading it:

Well, I really LOVED this story! The clearest sign was that I stayed up till two or later trying to finish it, and then woke up shortly before ten am to find out what happened in the last forty to sixty pages.
When I found out it was in diary format, I was a little worried, especia...more Without a doubt her best book ever!

I'm noticing an odd trend in my reading, but this one again is one not for the light of stomach or easily squeamish.

Here's what I wrote right after I finished reading it:

Well, I really LOVED this story! The clearest sign was that I stayed up till two or later trying to finish it, and then woke up shortly before ten am to find out what happened in the last forty to sixty pages.
When I found out it was in diary format, I was a little worried, especially because I thought it was going to keep bouncing around through different diaries and it would never even be hers. Then I was afraid she was going to give things away by saying something like ‘something terrible happened tonight, but I will get to that later.’ Tamora did a very good job of only doing that once, and only for the “Fishpuppy” incident.
I thought some of the character feels and traits were repeats, in retrospect. Like Pounce, a possible god or constellation cat with purple eyes (that’s straight out of her first book of Alanna). Then there’s Beka being able to talk to birds (from Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen; although admittedly it was crows? then and pigeons with Beka). Clary Goodwin was a very Alanna type brisk character, and Mattius felt like the other tall, lanky guy who hooks up with a woman fighter from either Alanna or the Page series. Rosto was George, obviously.
But for all that, I really enjoyed this book, and I didn’t notice those things as much then.
I thought it was nice that the thieves (rushers) and Provost Guard Trainees (Puppies) could be friends. I knew from page one that Beka was going to hook up with Rosto though. Come on, if she’s going to birth George as a great, great grandson, she had to have thief in his blood already. Although clever of George’s mom to leave that part out…
It was interesting for them to live in a world without the Stormwings, when they were so pivotal in all the earlier series of Tortall. And there was just one reference to the time when they were said to come back, and many streets named after them that no one seemed to care about, even as I know others later in the Human Era would.
I thought Mistress Noll as the villain was really sad, although I’m glad Gemma got out of it okay. I hope Beka stays in touch with Tansy and Herum and Annis, and as well as the Ashmillers, even though the girls weren’t to keen on her.
I did have a little cry when three of Beka’s four siblings came to forgive her and were proud of her in the closed trial at the end of the book. I thought Diona should have bucked it up and been there too, since she was the rudest of all of them to Beka, but I understand it couldn’t have been perfect that way, it would have just been to simple.
I really hope she makes a sequel to this book, but I really don’t see how she could. I just looked online and they said it is to be a trilogy. I am SOO excited. Now I just hope Tamora Pierce lives long enough to finish and publish them!. I have now pre-ordered the second book. It is to come out April 29th of next year. That is over a year from now. I think I will plan to drop everything and read it the minute it arrives! And to re-read Terrier right before then. Maybe next March 1st and 2nd I will be enjoying this really good book again.

All in all, this was a wonderfully well written book! I enjoyed the growling of the dogs very much and Beka being afraid to speak in public, but still cutting Rosto’s wrist with her fingernail when he insulted her. ‘She’s shy, not stupid.’ That was a great line. You even got used to the street slang and Beka’s occasional bad grammar until you no longer noticed it. And I really like the Dog pub where they always ate. I had hoped Beka would be made a dog at the end of this novel, but as she wasn’t, when she is I hope she becomes the first threesome with Goodwin and Tunstall, or, as a lesser option, becomes Ersken’s partner. I really wanted her to hook up with Ersken, but I think now Kora is a good match for him: as long as you watch the mage fire thrown at the door when you try to wake her.
And I have to say, oddly, I wasn’t the slightest bit sad Fulk died. I didn’t like him at all. Although I’m not sure if how I feel about Crookshank (honestly, after the first five mentions, you forget that’s another literary name-famously for a wizard’s cat). I half wanted him to live, even though he was evil. Just because he was cracked and needed to stand trial for what he’d done. Even if he died (was murdered) in the Cages, like Yates’ friend was.
I can’t help wondering where they hid the bodies of the Shadow Snake victims. I REALLY hope Mistress Noll didn’t go Missus Lovett and put them in her ovens or pastries…

So I would re-read this book again OH YES!
I give it five stars and read it again soon! It’s definitely a keeper!.
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