A new painting! Successfully finished to round out this year, that’s right, it’s Beka Cooper from Tamora Pierce’s Terrier, one of my all time favorite heroines! I’m still not 100% satisfied with the background, so we’ll see if I make any adjustments in the future, but I’m very pleased with the mess of characters I threw at myself! . posted on Instagram - https://instagr.am/p/CX1CTwcrKcc/
I’m always disappointed in the lack of Tamora Pierce fandom, particularly for Beka. She may be my favorite mc (controversial maybe, acab) and I feel like I never see her talked about at all.
Pierce’s world is incredibly deep while still being approachable, and realistic without feeling like “gritty grimdark.” Also the Provost’s Dog audiobooks are possibly the best in that universe, with some amazing accent work from the narrator.
Hey don’t insult Achoo like that! /j
But also yeah Pierce’s characters are good at depth, and Beka and Kel are two of my faves for being self-assured without crossing over into arrogant or impulsive (side eyeing Alanna). They’re thinkers who recognize tough decisions when they face them, and still strive to do what’s right and what’s smart.
This is the third and final part of my Beka Cooper reread!
Mastiff has a very different feel from the first two novels, primarily because it largely deviates from the city setting and throws the characters into the countryside and away from their touchstones. Both Goodwin and Lord Gershom are caught up in other things, and so Beka is part of an isolated team that keeps far from the cities and moves through the forests.
We also get a really interesting look at court personages and politics in a way that we haven’t been privy to before. I liked that the queen was a much more present character than the king, and makes a connection with Beka as well as finds the strength to come for her son where her husband cannot. She humanises the upper classes and forms a nice contrast to the corrupt nobles who arise during the novel, and also shows more evidence that there can be empathy and understanding between classes. Sabine also serves this purpose, but begins as more of a mentor and comrade to Beka rather than a close friend, most likely because of age difference rather than class. They become closer over the course of a book, especially as two women who can empathise with the difficulty of one another’s romantic situations, past and present.
Women are nicely represented in the mage classes, nobility and navy – I especially liked Cassine Catfoot and her practicality and off-screen heroism. The fact that she produced a student like Farmer Cape makes me even more pleased, as she has given Beka a lovely feminist husband with a passion for fine embroidery, and who instigates hilarious conversations about body cavity searches. And let’s talk about husbands for a moment – Beka proposes to Farmer, and he wants to take her name, and I love them so much. I think it’s also important to show that any woman can find herself in an abusive relationship, and the detail of Beka’s fiancé gaslighting her was very apt. Sabine’s understanding of that was also well done. It was refreshing to see that Beka wasn’t the slightest bit sorry that he was dead, too.
Sabine’s awareness of violence and sexual violence is often alluded to and the fact that she trained her own horses to kick men’s faces in is amazing and a horrible revelation of the fact that even when women become knights, they are not equal. It was good to see another complicated female knight show up in this book, and even better to see Sabine justly rewarded for her work by taking over the protection of the royal children and finally getting validation for her years of trial. The fact that she doesn’t see marriage as a necessity makes her even more interesting and also creates the conflict with Tunstall, who is not so much a modern man as he believes.
Tunstall’s sexist views of gendered activities were an interesting part of his character in this book. Interestingly, this was more directed towards Farmer than any of the female characters, showing that he prizes things that are typically masculine above all else and believes that his female companions fit this sphere. Beka comments that she and Goodwin believe that there aren’t male or female things, just things people choose to do, which really heightens the contrast between this book and Bloodhound: Tunstall’s backward values versus Goodwin’s modernity and openness. Tunstall becomes corrupt through discontent, while Goodwin was corrupt and remade herself into a better person and a champion of women. Tunstall’s relationship with Sabine is fraught with what he sees as inequalities and insurmountable obstacles; Beka and Farmer, as the younger generation, are uncomplicated about the fact that they are on an equal footing and don’t put stock in gendered things but embrace who they are.
The Gentle Goddess cult really takes off in this book. The refusal of the female soldiers to go near and Beka fighting her humiliation and standing up for herself by refusing to change her attire were very powerful. Beka is flabbergasted at the idea that a woman must not dirty herself with violence and should be pure by not defending themselves, which really shows the difference between this sect of the nobility and common folk. I really think this is something that endures even in the earlier Tortall series: the classes become further divided, but common women keep more of their freedom out of necessity. I liked that Sabine was attempting to subvert the cult from the inside, and that even when she was faking agreement to marriage with Prince Baird she still negotiated for an open and equal relationship.
Finally, this book really acknowledges that Beka is the best at what she does and has worked hard for it. There are no bones made about her pragmatic nature and her skill in a fight, and Farmer embraces her differences from him and complements her perfectly. Something I loved, in a dreadful way, was that as soon as she perceives Tunstall as an enemy she knows exactly which spots to hit and how to hurt him the most. She can be cold, and she can be ruthless, but this in no way makes her a bad person. Her god is the god of death, who is the most kind of the gods and the most understanding. She inspires love and respect in others, and is the catalyst for Gareth’s decision to ask the king to ban slavery by reminding him that he can be good, and do good, and cannot spend his life in hatred. And she gets a happy ending.
This is the second part of my Beka Cooper reread! It took me a little longer to finish Bloodhoundbecause I discovered Child of Light in the Steam Summer sale a few days ago and it sucked me in. I think it probably deserves a blog post sometime in the future.
Bloodhoundtransitions very nicely from Beka as a teenager safely in training to a young woman cut loose from her mentors and trying to establish a niche for herself. Even though she is partnered back up with Goodwin it is not as a student but as a subordinate, and learning to negotiate that space is an important part of her time in Port Caynn. Over the time they gain an easier camaraderie as they learn to work together as partners and support each other equally. Tunstall is largely absent from this one, so this novel is very much about female solidarity and friendship. Of course, we get to see a lot more of Tunstall in the third book…
One nice detail I liked that was touched upon again in Terrieris the way that Beka and Goodwin dress off and on duty. On duty they wear breeches, tunics, boots, armour and weapons, but off duty they still must conform to the dress code for city women. This isn’t depicted as a negative thing, but both of them wear dresses and soft shoes with their hair covered (very different to Beka’s spiked plait during her working hours). Beka shows discomfort in switching between presentations but tries to find a compromise: her lover is a disconcerted when he finds that although Beka is the picture of a respectable city girl when out on the town, she still has knives strapped to her arms and legs ready to be used if necessary. He never quite manages to reconcile the two facets of her or correctly estimate how central her job is to her life.
Back to the Cult of the Mother Goddess: Sir Lionel spouts some absolute trash on that front and the place of women, and is taken aback at Beka’s complete incomprehension. His role here is to really reiterate the fact that only nobles are invested in the cult, while the common people hold an entirely different relationship with the Mother Goddess. A nice contrast to Sir Lionel is the presence of the women who serve the temples of the Great Mother Goddess – Goodwin is a magistrate there, and the temple has its own court where women are tried by women. During the raid the Dogs are assisted by female soldiers from the temples, and the temples are shown to be influential. Juxtaposing Sir Lionel’s vision of Goddess worship with that of the people around him shows him to be in the minority, and strongly out of line with existing beliefs and practices. The temple of the Goddess encapsulates all of her faces, while Sir Lionel only acknowledges her position as a mother, not as a warrior or as a judge.
Two more things: firstly, Beka gets to navigate sex and relationships a little more seriously in this book. She starts up a casual relationship, sorts herself out some birth control and tries to have the kind of time other girls of her age are having. Beka has had sex a few times before this book, but she has never had even a short relationship before and struggles to figure out the intricacies, but has a good time and comes out of the experience a little wiser. Goodwin gives her advice about this too, and she also looks to Okha, a trans entertainer, for advice about birth control and doing her makeup. Okha herself is great and twisty, mapping out the Court of the Rogue in secret in hopes of using it to help bring down Pearl. It seems that in Beka’s society trans identities aren’t widely known of, but Beka accepts Okha uncomplicatedly and they work together to bring down Pearl.
Secondly, Port Caynn’s Court of the Rogue is headed by a woman, and her lead assassin is a woman – but that’s not where I’m going with this. Peal Skinner is a great villain, but having Fair Flory take over from her is much more interesting. Fair Flory is the leader of Port Caynn’s orange seller and flower girls (which probably includes the city’s sex workers). She’s cunning, flirtatious and conventionally feminine, but she is also picked out as the best person to take the court back from Pearl – and when push comes to shove strides in with a cutlass, a hammer, and a gang of women ready to take what they want. She was one of the great characters in the book and I would be interested to see how Port Caynn’s Court of the Rogue turns out – but this is a Dog’s story.
Recently I have started a reread of Tamora Pierce’s Provost’s Dog trilogy. Although I read them as they were published I have never actually read them all back to back as a completed series! The final book was such a game changer for me that I thought it would be interesting to track the themes that were revealed in Mastiffthrough the series as a whole. (Spoilers ahead.)
Today I finished reading Terrier.I found myself examining class relations and a lot more than I had originally; I also ran a sharper eye over female representation. After eight years I am definitely more attuned to picking things out and getting more of a sense of what Tamora Pierce is trying to represent with her female characters, primary, secondary and even in the background.
Terrierhas so many fantastic, fascinating women: experienced guardswomen, elderly pickpockets, wise grandmothers, morally dubious swordswomen and lady knights. There is a female domestic abuser who is taken completely seriously. Some of these are only referenced or bit-parts, but their inclusion builds a clearer picture of what Beka’s society is like and what expectations are pressed upon women. Her world isn’t free of sexism, but it takes the backburner and does not actually appear to dictate women’s choices, at least in Beka’s sphere. There are so many kinds of women represented that it does not matter that a woman is the villain – this isn’t a case of a single heroine, a bunch of male heroes and a female villain. There is no tokenism, and every woman has a space on the page. Female friendships and female mentors are woven throughout the novel, and I can really feel that Beka has a strong female support system and female elders to turn to. Romance is always secondary to her work and her other relationships, and that is a breath of fresh air.
Class actually is tied into views of gender roles: interestingly, the lower in society one is the more freedom one seems to have. We know that Lady Sabine faces sexism from her male fellows and finds it taxing, that Lady Gershom disapproves of Beka not choosing a more docile life. Beka actually appears to inhabit a less sexist workspace than Lady Sabine, and Dog partnerships most commonly consist of one male Dog and one female Dog. She is not sexually harassed and fast gains respect for her skills.
The meeting between higher social class and the growth of sexism is very lightly touched upon, but at one point Beka remarks that in noble circles the genders now bathe separately rather than together, unlike the common people. The segregation of genders in bathing hints towards a new enforcement of gender roles and differences (they are sexualising the naked female body and making it shameful), which I believe is tied to the Cult of the Mother Goddess that fully emerges in Mastiff.In noble classes working is an option, not a necessity, and we can see over the centuries leading up to the Song of the Lioness Quartet how Alanna is born into a society that no longer allows women to be knights. We do not gain more rights in an ever upward curve, from the past to present: the line peaks and drops through each century as we go backwards and forwards.
I can see how Pierce is trying to show the change that will come, although I feel that by Alanna’s time it is so radical that I feel that the earlier books don’t quite fit with the rest of the canon anymore. It is hard to suspend my disbelief, although I also must remember that Alanna belongs to a privileged class and her series doesn’t much touch upon the lives of common women. Nevertheless, Terrierexplores these issues so extensively compared to Alanna’s books that I cannot escape my awareness of how long ago they were written and how little the world was fleshed out. (I was definitely put in mind of Malinda Lo’s exploration of the jolty represention of queerness in Kristen Cashore’s novels.)
