Beka Cooper: Is Three Different Dogs
Mar. 13th, 2013 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileHey y'all, it is time for me to talk about the Beka Cooper trilogy! These three books, collectively known as the Provost's Dog series, are entitled Terrier, Bloodhound, and Mastiff. I have already reviewed Mastiff on this blog when I first read it, which just coincidentally happened to be when Occupy Wall Street was kicking off, which you can tell in the review.
Anyway. The Provost's Dog books take place about two hundred years BEFORE the beginning of the Song of the Lioness quartet, and Beka is George Cooper's something-great-grandmother (there are some interesting bits of character backstory that we learn to explain why George still has Beka's last name even though he's descended from her in the maternal line). Tamora Pierce definitely made Beka Cooper's Corus seem like a different time period than Alanna's Corus, including being less socially progressive in a lot of ways (there is still slavery, for instance) although there is less Women Are Super Delicate stuff going on--the Cult of the Gentle Mother is a social influence that is pretty new and gaining power during this series, which I think is awesome, because backlashes/regression, they really do happen. There is also lots of fun with medieval slang! This takes some getting used to, but overall I think it ends up being a lot of fun, particularly the swearing. The swearing is wonderful.
These books are big compared to the earlier ones, clocking it at around five or six hundred pages apiece. This is good, as it allows a lot of room for elements of Literary Fantasy, such as listing delicious-sounding foods, describing what everyone is wearing, and talking about going to the bathroom. Also the aforementioned swearing.
On a more serious note, there are also BIG CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES that Beka and her partners have to unravel because they are AWESOME MEDIEVAL COPS. And many of them are ladies! I cannot even deal with how many awesome lady cops there are in this series, from bit characters like Desk Sargeant Kebibi Ahuda to Beka and one of her partners, a veteran Dog named Clary Goodwin, who is just awesomely cranky and completely zero-bullshit. Goodwin especially shines in the second book, where she and Beka go to Port Caynn to try and unravel a counterfeiting conspiracy. (Tunstall is sadly at home in Corus with broken legs in this one.) There is also another lady knight, Lady Sabine of Macayhill, because it would be cruel for Tamora Pierce to give us a whole series without any awesome lady knights. There are some pretty cool nonmilitary women as well, like Beka's friend Kora the hedgewitch, and Serenity, who runs a lodging house in Port Caynn and just keeps randomly being awesome.
Beka, in addition to being a policewoman, is also a sort-of mage; she doesn't have the Gift, but she has the ability to hear the spirits of the dead when they ride on the backs of pigeons (pigeons are the messengers of the Black God, apparently), and she can also listen to dust spinners, which apparently hold bits of conversation and want to dump them off on somebody else (it makes more sense in the book).
I don't want to go into the plots because it'd be hard to say much of anything without giving it all away, but the basic premises are: In the first book, there's a possible serial killer who kidnaps small children for ransom and kills them if the parents don't hand over their prized possessions, plus someone is hiring crews of diggers who then mysteriously disappear; in the second book, somebody is producing large quantities of counterfeit silver coins and they seem to be coming out of Port Caynn; in the third book, somebody has kidnapped the heir to the throne and hidden him as a slave, plus the realm's mages are in a big snit.
I really do have a lot to say about these books but I don't really want to end up writing another 8-page review. Maybe someday I will go back to school and do a paper on Pierce! That would be the best paper-writing experience I think I could ever have.
Anyway. The Provost's Dog books take place about two hundred years BEFORE the beginning of the Song of the Lioness quartet, and Beka is George Cooper's something-great-grandmother (there are some interesting bits of character backstory that we learn to explain why George still has Beka's last name even though he's descended from her in the maternal line). Tamora Pierce definitely made Beka Cooper's Corus seem like a different time period than Alanna's Corus, including being less socially progressive in a lot of ways (there is still slavery, for instance) although there is less Women Are Super Delicate stuff going on--the Cult of the Gentle Mother is a social influence that is pretty new and gaining power during this series, which I think is awesome, because backlashes/regression, they really do happen. There is also lots of fun with medieval slang! This takes some getting used to, but overall I think it ends up being a lot of fun, particularly the swearing. The swearing is wonderful.
These books are big compared to the earlier ones, clocking it at around five or six hundred pages apiece. This is good, as it allows a lot of room for elements of Literary Fantasy, such as listing delicious-sounding foods, describing what everyone is wearing, and talking about going to the bathroom. Also the aforementioned swearing.
On a more serious note, there are also BIG CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES that Beka and her partners have to unravel because they are AWESOME MEDIEVAL COPS. And many of them are ladies! I cannot even deal with how many awesome lady cops there are in this series, from bit characters like Desk Sargeant Kebibi Ahuda to Beka and one of her partners, a veteran Dog named Clary Goodwin, who is just awesomely cranky and completely zero-bullshit. Goodwin especially shines in the second book, where she and Beka go to Port Caynn to try and unravel a counterfeiting conspiracy. (Tunstall is sadly at home in Corus with broken legs in this one.) There is also another lady knight, Lady Sabine of Macayhill, because it would be cruel for Tamora Pierce to give us a whole series without any awesome lady knights. There are some pretty cool nonmilitary women as well, like Beka's friend Kora the hedgewitch, and Serenity, who runs a lodging house in Port Caynn and just keeps randomly being awesome.
Beka, in addition to being a policewoman, is also a sort-of mage; she doesn't have the Gift, but she has the ability to hear the spirits of the dead when they ride on the backs of pigeons (pigeons are the messengers of the Black God, apparently), and she can also listen to dust spinners, which apparently hold bits of conversation and want to dump them off on somebody else (it makes more sense in the book).
I don't want to go into the plots because it'd be hard to say much of anything without giving it all away, but the basic premises are: In the first book, there's a possible serial killer who kidnaps small children for ransom and kills them if the parents don't hand over their prized possessions, plus someone is hiring crews of diggers who then mysteriously disappear; in the second book, somebody is producing large quantities of counterfeit silver coins and they seem to be coming out of Port Caynn; in the third book, somebody has kidnapped the heir to the throne and hidden him as a slave, plus the realm's mages are in a big snit.
I really do have a lot to say about these books but I don't really want to end up writing another 8-page review. Maybe someday I will go back to school and do a paper on Pierce! That would be the best paper-writing experience I think I could ever have.
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Date: 2013-03-15 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-17 10:50 pm (UTC)