Book Review: Wild Magic (Tortall 2023 Reread)

“We share this world, Daine. We can’t hold apart from each other—humans and animals are meant to be partners.”

Onua

Odd’s bobs, I’m back!

Actually, I read Wild Magic in May almost immediately after Tempests and Slaughter, and then I just couldn’t bring myself to write a review. The slumpiest of slumps hit me.

But I am determined to catch up, and to finish what I started: reread the Tortall books in 2023. Will I finish reviewing them in 2023? That’s a better question.

Daine was my entry point to Tamora Pierce and the world of Tortall. I can’t remember what year it was specifically (the book was first published December 1st, 1992 and I can guarantee you I was not up to a chapter book of this magnitude at the tender age of 5—nearly 6) but in the year both my elementary school librarian and parents and then my grandmother gave me this book to read (this particular cover was released in 1997, so I’m thinking it was probably 1997 or 1998). To be fair, my librarian got there first. I think my mom bought me the book because I wanted it (and because there was a horse on the cover). Grandmops gave me the book for Christmas not realizing it was a duplicate (probably because there was a horse on the cover).

Unfortunately, neither of those copies are in my possession. At one point I had all four of the Patti Joyce covers, but over the years and college and military moves and general chaos with my family, the first three original books are gone. I have the fourth book, and it’s getting very ragged. The other three are newer editions I picked up a number of years ago.

But anywho. I digress.

Daine was my starting point to Tortall. I loved anything to do with horses. I loved that she was a kickass girl who talked to animals and had a horse sidekick. The late-90s being what they were, I didn’t realize there were other books in the series, or other series in the overall world. I read and reread Wild Magic a lot.

When I read Alanna’s books, I actually preferred Daine over Alanna! Now, my internal ranking places Alanna over Daine. Many of the things I admired about Daine as a kid annoy me as an adult. Weird how these things happen. But the world of Tortall, as seen through the eyes of a traumatized girl forced to grow up far too fast, remains magical.

Before I got in depth, here’s a brief review of the plot (spoilers abound):

The Plot, in a Nutshell

Veralidaine Sarrasri—known as a bastard for her last name, meaning Sarra’s daughter—aka Daine, meets Onua Chamtong in Gala’s capital city of Cría (don’t worry, this city doesn’t matter and neither does Gala) during a horse trading fair. Onua, who is the keeper of horses for the Queen’s Riders in Tortall, is looking for a sidekick to help her bring a herd of ponies back to Tortall in time for Rider Boot Camp (not its official name). Having a sidekick is especially important with news of weird shit popping up along the roadways.

Almost immediately, we see Daine through Onua’s POV: a medium height girl with curly brown hair, vulnerable mouth and stubborn chin (yes, those are more or less the descriptions), a massive bow, and a grey pony named Cloud who acts more like a dog than a pony. Daine gets hired on, and impresses Onua two ways despite Onua knowing she’s lying about her age: with her skill and accuracy with the bow, and the way she interacts with the ponies—like she is one of them. Daine is young, she’s running from something, but Onua has a feeling she isn’t going to get better help, and there’s something about this girl that intrigues her.

The weirdness about the girl gets weirder as we jump to Daine’s POV on their journey west, and she is visited in her dreams by a badger, who tells her he has been looking for her and has been sent by her father to watch after her, but he forgot time passes differently in the Human Realms. He gives her one of his claws, which is made of silver and vanishes in a silver fog. In a world where the color of your magic matters, silver means immortal. Daine believes it was all a dream, but has the claw.

One morning, Daine wakes up one morning with this weird sense that something is wrong. They’re about to pass a fief with a spicy lordling who is not a fan of the Queen, when Daine sees a bird fleeing from a pack of really weird-looking half-human, half-metal bird creatures. Daine and Onua fight off the Stormwings, and it looks like things are going to go very poorly for the humans when all of a sudden all the birds in the area rise up to fight the Stormwings. Once the battle is over, Daine finds a dead bird and it comes to life in her hands—as do a bunch of other injured birds. Onua is like, wtf is going on here.

Anywho, Onua is also looking for the bird that escaped. Daine finds it, but there is just something wrong with the bird. As they continue onward, she tries to care for it, but it has a broken wing and is just off. She can’t feel it. The bird’s health is dwindling, and Daine becomes convinced it will die, so Onua calls for help. The Lioness is nearby. She’s a mage. She can help.

“Don’t tell me,” Alanna said. “You were expecting someone bigger.”

Alanna

Alanna, Onua and the bird go into a tent, and the bird vanishes and there’s this man there. Daine is like “where the hell is my bird, dammit?!” But before she can really dig into it, a new kind of creature attacks. Human heads + massive spider bodies = spidrens. Daine impresses Alanna with her archery, and they bond a little.

Daine learns where these monsters are coming from: the Divine Realms, which had been sealed away from the Human Realms by human mages 400 years ago. Someone recently broke the seal, and now creatures are passing into the Human Realms to pester humans.

Daine also meets the strange man who was her bird; Numair, one of the most powerful mages in Tortall and the world. One of a very small number of black-robed mages. He’s in his late twenties, and fascinated by Daine’s abilities. Daine is less sure about her abilities, because she is no mage (and she’s terrified about the bad thing that happened a year ago).

They finally reach Corus, the capital of Tortall, and Daine is just in total culture shock.

“Odd’s bobs, this is a strange place! Knights who say call ’em by their first name and mages that light tinder and queens that run around dressed like real people!”

Daine

She is hired on as Onua’s official assistant, helping with the Queen’s Rider trainees. It’s hard, as she’s definitely a lot younger than most of them, but she gains their respect and the respect of the adults. As an employee and not an official recruit, she has a lot of agency. Numair keeps trying to train her in something he’s calling wild magic, but she’s resistant because again, the bad thing. Reluctantly, she starts to train, mostly to explore her range, but she keeps losing herself.

Finally, she tells Numair and Onua what happened. Her mother and grandfather and all the animals had been murdered by bandits while she and Cloud were out. She came home to her entire world destroyed. She buried them all, and then something just…snapped. She joined up with a band of wolves and seemed to lose herself in them. Together, they hunted down the bandits and murdered them—but worse, her own people had tried to murder her when she attempted to come home afterward. She’d eventually come back to herself, and left. Numair is like, oh, you’re worried about losing yourself—I can help you. He anchors her to herself, and she gains a lot of confidence, and then immediately starts to learn how to heal animals.

Meanwhile, things are getting weird politically. Something is coming. Everyone thinks it’s because of Emperor Ozorne, the ruler of the Carthaki Empire and a powerful mage with ambitious of greatness, but there’s no proof. There are a line of Stormwings along the coast, just hovering in position. Something is about to go down, but no one knows what. There are rumors of griffins attacking a coastal city—Queen Thayet, Alanna, Numair and a cohort of Rider trainees head off to investigate. Daine is able to chill out the griffins (not without almost causing an incident with the humans), and Alanna is like, let’s head to my home in Pirate’s Swoop for some downtime, and Thayet agrees because the prince and princess are there, too. Numair heads to his tower, which is nearby.

Everyone has weird dreams of things about to get real bad, real soon. Alanna is called away to deal with three ogres. Daine dreams of men on the beach, and wakes up to alert the keep of an attack.

In that moment, they are under siege.

They have 80 warriors plus the Riders. The Queen and both heirs are trapped and they are horribly outnumbered. But, thanks to Daine and her advance warning and her ability with the animals, the nearby village is emptied, all the people and animals are safe in the keep, and the animals are all calm. Numair arrives—he was able to get word to the king just before a magical fog rolled in dampening everyone’s Gift. Everyone, that is, but Daine. Numair is keeping the fog at bay to allow everyone else to work, but it’s draining them.

Then a fleet of Carthakis show up, except they are flying no flags. They are equipped with barges and mages, and things are looking very bad. Everyone is turning to Numair, who is like, dudes I can only do so much. Daine is fighting to keep the animals from attacking because she doesn’t want more of her friends to die because it’s not their fight. Stormwings deliver the terms and conditions: surrender the queen and kids, or die.

Then a dragon appears. Almost kills them. Rages at at them and attempts to murder them with her own magic. Daine tries to talk to her and realizes she’s young and scared and had been kidnapped from her home by the enemy mages. The dragon is in labor—the transportation spell killed her baby, but Daine did something and the baby is alive.

“An enemy that’s tired, ill fed and scared is an enemy who’s half beat.”

Buri

When Diane finally realizes—thanks to Onua—that her keeping her friends from fighting isn’t the best solution, she engages and goes into overdrive. Turns out, animals are very good at guerrilla war.

But it’s not enough.

Daine convinces Alanna’s husband George to get her to the beach to try to call for help. She reaches out the whales, who are pacifists and move along. She reaches far out, and comes into contact with something old and angry who is like, sure, I’ll help you. But she has no idea if he is going to get there in time.

The battle heightens. The dragon appears and sacrifices herself in battle to save them. The mother fucking kraken arrives and turns the fleet into kindling. Reinforcements come in, with the King and Alanna attacking. Daine kills the queen stormwing, and passes out.

Later, she wakes up with the dream of a cave in her mind. There’s a light in the cave. She convinces everyone to let her go, and she finds a baby dragon named Skysong. Daine realizes that she can’t continue with Onua now—the dragon kit is her main responsibility. And everyone offers her a new home.

Of Found Family, Immigration and Home

I think the driving force of Wild Magic is definitely the theme of home through first generation experiences.

The majority of characters we meet: Onua, Numair, Sarge, Buri and Thayet, are all immigrants to Tortall. They left their homes for chances to make their lives better. Buri and Thayet are war refugees. Onua is a domestic abuse survivor. Sarge is a former slave/gladiator. Numair is wanted man.

Even the native Tortallans are transplants—or people who shifting in this new, upwardly mobile society. Alanna is a knight and legend in a world where girls can’t fight. George is a former thief turned baron. Hakeem moved from his tribe in the south to the Riders. Daine’s Rider recruit friends are all transplants looking for ways to serve their country and transform their own fates. Even Raoul and Jonathan, the two most generic white dudes, are forging new paths—using their positions of power to open doors and new opportunities to people.

Daine enters this world, which has drastically seemed to have changed in many ways since Alanna’s quartet (although there is note that there is significant backlash from all this social and political upheaval among many nobles and wealthier commoners), and is just in awe. Tortall is a world of innovation and change. Anyone can be anything. Anyone can find their place.

For a bastard, socially outcast girl who was literally forced out of her home, first by bandits and then by her own townspeople, this is huge. To start the book off scared, determined and alone, and end it less-scared, more sure of herself and with a host of friends—Onua, Alanna, Numair and Thayet all tell her she has a place in their homes—is nothing short of a fantastic character arc. As a kid it didn’t affect me too much. As an adult, I love it.

Of Magic and Worth

“You may look like a human, but you aren’t. You’re of the People: the folk of claw and fur, wing and scale.”

Cloud

As explored in Tempests and Slaughter, there is a hierarchy to magic. What counts as a mage. What doesn’t count? Who gets to be a mage and have magic? And who is just…weird?

Daine has a lot of emotional baggage (understandably). She’s overcoming the traumatic loss of her entire family (save Cloud). She’s lived a lifetime of being considered a social outcast. She’s also been constantly belittled by her mother, who apparently was determined that Daine was a mage like herself and kept testing her over and over and over for the Gift, and acting like the world was going to end that Daine had no Gift or power.

Adding to her grief and survivor’s guilt is the trauma of going insane and losing herself. Later, we learn that that was to teach Daine a lesson—what that lesson was, who the fuck knows, because that the fuck. Anywho, she’s terrified of losing herself.

Add all of that together, and you have an already stubborn thirteen-year-old who decides to very stubbornly refuse to learn, push herself, or communicate. She’s not a mage, stop trying to make magic happen!

Thankfully, Numair is a patient teacher, and both Onua and Alanna have solid heads on their shoulders. Onua recognizes someone who is going through some shit, and helps Daine get the space she needs to heal. And Daine very slowly realizes that there is magic and magic. That her kind of magic has a whole lot of value, even if it’s not entirely seen or understood by most traditional mages. She’s not a traditional mage and never will be, but she still has a lot to offer.

Of War, And Who Gets to Fight

“It’s ’cause of me being a princess that all this is happening. It’s my fault and I hate it!”

Kalasin

At several points throughout the book, the adults in the room look at Daine are like, “shit, this is a kid.” They know they were all children when they started being warriors, but Daine is not a noble. She’s not Tortallan. She’s good with a bow, but she’s not a warrior. As such, she’s kept out of a lot of the big-time political and strategizing discussions, which makes sense because even though they all know her, she hasn’t yet found her place. She’s just a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast.

But in Tortall as in the world at large, war affects everyone.

From villagers caught in the path of an army to their animals trapped in pens to tiny princesses who are just pawns to political maneuvering.

It becomes very clear that Daine’s presence is changing the animals around her. That the animals listen to her. That they will even disobey their owners to come to her aid or to abide by her will. That makes a lot of humans understandably nervous around her, and Daine becomes determined not to let the animals help in the war (see: the death of all the birds with the first stormwing battle). She prevents them from doing what they want to do to help, until realizing that everyone wants to do their part to defend their homes. That they have a right, too, to defend their homes from invaders.

Anywho, in this world, as much as innovation and advancement as there is, war is a constant threat. And the changing nature of the arriving immortals is causing even more of a strain on Tortall (and the world) than ever.

Things are changing fast, and Daine and company are going to have to adapt or die.

Overall Thoughts

As a kid, this was one of my most favorist books ever.

As an adult, it’s still a solid five-star read but that’s mostly for the nostalgia aspect. It’s good, but Wild Magic is the introductory book that opens up Tortall.

Chronologically, it’s the book that really leans into immortals and gods and wild magic for the first time (although Numair deals with animal gods in his book and, to a lesser extent, wild magic). It opens up the world of Tortall, turning this entire world into a multidimensional one, comprised of the Human Realms and the Divine Realms and, later, the Chaos Realm (more on this when I review book 4, because honestly I don’t think that particular plot line was handled real well). Where Alanna went east across the continent and Numair grew up in Carthak and Beka came from Corus, Daine is coming west, a newcomer to Tortall, exploring it with fresh eyes.

In publication order, this book was released after the Song of the Lioness quartet. It was somewhat revolutionary in that it did not focus on a noble or princess or squire, but on a commoner girl. Granted, she’s very clearly touched by the gods and a Chosen One of some sort, but what kind of Chosen One? And what’s a Chosen One while there’s also Alanna, literal living legend? Also, this book departs a little from the traditional school novel approach Pierce employed with Alanna: Daine learns a lot, but it’s more an informal schooling through the Riders and Numair. And, unlike Alanna’s series, which featured a lot of time compression and time skips, Daine’s book is focused on a much narrower timeline.

From here on out, each of the books’ timelines gets a lot tighter.

I can’t wait.

Also, I’ll chat more about the immortals themselves (and the themes of animal-human connection) in my next review, since this one is horrifically long. Kudos to you for reading all the way to the end!

Final Rating: 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲/5

Previously in my 2023 Tortall Reread Series:

• Beka Cooper’s Trilogy:
  • Terrier (book 1)
  • Bloodhound (book 2)
  • Mastiff (book 3)
• Song of the Lioness Quartet:
  • Alanna: The First Adventure (book 1)
  • In the Hand of the Goddess (book 2)
  • The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (book 3)
  • Lioness Rampant (book 4)
• Tempests and Slaughter