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Reading as a Writer: Tamora Pierce's Tortall

If there is anyone who actually reads this blog, they may have picked up that I didn't post anything for all of May. That's because I was swept up in a blanket of comfort reads and didn't want to write about it until I'd finished. 

I read all of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books in a month, back to back to back in chronological story order (the three Beka books, four Alanna, four Daine, four Kel, two Ali, and then the companion "A Spy's Guide" and "Tortall and Other Realms" short stories.) If I'm counting correctly, that was 19 books in a month. I did not read the Numair book, because it makes me sad that we may not ever have a complete trilogy.

And I loved it! As always, I bawled when I got to the end of the Beka trilogy, and again at the perfection that is the epilogue at the end Trickster's Queen. Every time I read these books I take away something new, and on this re-read I was captivated by the adults in the series, and our protagonists as they became adults: the choices they made, the way their lives had shaped them. It made me weepy with wonder. 

I am so lucky that I randomly picked up First Test and Lady Knight at the Scholastic Book Fair in 2002. (Why oh why was the book fair selling only those two? Will I ever find the mythical paperback original edition of Page and Squire??) And it is wild to think that I've been reading these books every time I need a bit of comfort for over twenty years!! My life would be so different if I hadn't read these books, in large and small ways. Maybe I never would have become a real fantasy fan; I probably would not have thought that I could write stories too. I owe so much to these books and it was a joy as always to spend a month nowhere but Tortall. 

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