Bloodhound/Tamora Pierce

Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper book 2); young adult, mystery, fantasy; 560 pages (about 18 hours on CD)

I'm continuing to love this series. In this volume, Beka is no longer a trainee, but a real Dog (city slang for the Provost's guard--medieval police officers). Someone has been flooding the royal city with counterfeit silver coins, driving up prices and causing food riots in the market. Beka and her partner Goodwin are sent on a mission to track down the counterfeiters and restore balance to the realm.

As with all of Pierce's book, I has a great time with this. The best thing (for me) was the addition of one more animal to Beka's retinue (of cat and pigeons)--a dog. Personally, I think dogs are underrepresented in fantasy lit, so it was really refreshing to see Beka's scent hound take a central role in the story. Beka grows up a lot in this book, and the mystery aspect comes to a very satisfying conclusion. Can't wait to start the next volume!

Terrier/Tamora Pierce

Terrier (Beka Cooper book 1), by Tamora Pierce; young adult, fantasy, mystery; 608 pages (about 13 hours on CD)

Tamora Pierce returns to her Tortall, but not the one I've come to know and love from her previous books. This story is set centuries before Alanna's time, and follows Beka, one of George Cooper's ancestors, and a Provost's Guard in training. The Guard (affectionately called the Dogs by most of the city's residents), is tasked with keeping peace in the market, and Beka's understaffed district doesn't have the time or the resources to do much more than that. But when a young boy is murdered, Beka digs deeper, and soon uncovers a series of crimes dating back years and years. And why was this boy chosen, to begin with?

It's a safe bet that I'll love anything Pierce writes, so it should come as no surprise that I fell in love with this book. For me, the icing on the cake was getting the chance to meet the author on a recent book tour (promoting the third book in this series, which I'll hopefully be reading soon). Beka's world is different enough from "modern" Tortall to still hold surprises, and there's some lovely foreshadowing to events that will happen in the other books, which makes it fun. I should put a warning in here: I was caught off guard by the police system of Beka's time--what we would class as corruption (taking bribes, bashing people with batons, and avoiding the organized crime of the city) is just the way things are done here, which took some getting used to. Still, I can't wait to dive into the next book: Bloodhound.