First published in 1992, Tamora Pierce’s Wild Magic starts a new series. It takes place several years after the end of Lioness Rampant and carries the readers further into the world of Tortall. We meet new characters, become reacquainted with old ones, and see them face new struggles. It’s also the series that I started reading Pierce’s work with, so I am indescribably fond. Pierce has grown immeasurably in the four years since the conclusion of her first quartet. Partly because of the choice of characters, and partly time wearing it’s inevitable journey forward. Whatever the cause Wild Magic marks a new beginning, for both the readers and the characters within.
Spoilers for Wild Magic and all four books in The Song of the Lioness Quartet. Content warnings for character death and temporary insanity.
What Happened?
Wild Magic begins with Daine, our new protagonist. She’s a thirteen year old bastard orphan, making her way to Tortall with Onua – who buys horses for the Queens Riders. In the years since Lioness Rampant, Thayet created a new branch of the army which allows women to fight. On the way to Tortall, Daine and Onua encounter stormwings (half human half metal bird monsters), spidrens (half human half spider monsters), and a strange hawk who is also a sorcerer called ‘Numair’. Once they arrive at Corus, Numair tells Daine that she has wild magic, which allows her to talk to animals and to heal them. We see Tortall under siege by monsters called immortals who’ve returned to the mortal realms after being locked in the divine realm centuries ago. Diane studies with Numair and helps Onua train the Riders.
As they head to the summer training camp, Pirate’s Swoop, Alanna and George’s Barony they encounter other problems. They meet Griffins, sea lions, and Daine learns to heal. She also tells Onua and Numair how bandits killed her mother and grandfather. She also tells about how she lost her humanity hunting said bandits with the local wolf pack. Cloud, her pony and constant companion, reminded her she was human, but Daine ran from her old town and couldn’t go back.
Once they arrive at Pirate’s Swoop, Carthaki raiders attack them. They want to kidnap Thayet and her two oldest children as leverage against Jonathan so that Carthak can conquer Tortall. The Riders, George’s people, a dragon, a kraken, and the animals working with Daine rebuff the invadors. The dragon dies and the book ends with Daine finding her baby and preparing to raise her.
Character Choice
One of the things that Pierce does wonderfully in this book and novel is that she gives us characters with more diverse backgrounds. The central characters from her previous series generally all came from places of privilege. Even George was the King of the Thieves, and high in that underground hierarchy. Wild Magic is centered around characters that come from different places, and Pierce also manages to balance her characters much better than she has done previously.
Evin and Miri and Gender Equality
One of the things that Pierce does almost immediately better is in who her character’s friends are. Until Woman who Rides Like a Man, Alanna didn’t have female friends. Admittedly, she was disguised as a boy for most of that time, but it doesn’t really reflect female friendships very well. From the beginning Daine is different in that respect. Once she arrives at Corus, she befriends both Evin Larse and Miri, both Rider trainees, and both from different walks of life. Miri is the daughter of fishers, and is only learning to not fear horses. Given the fact that the Riders are a cavalry based organization, Daine helps immensely with this. Evin Larse is the son of Players, which are wandering actors and entertainers.
Miri even implicitly references what Pierce has done by including her and Evin in the story. When she approaches Daine, where she had been sitting all alone, she asks if Daine was a Trainee. Daine says no, but that she’ll be helping with the ponies. Miri says, “Good—we need more girls. There are two many boys.” (105). While it is both a commentary on how stories need more female protagonists in general, it also speaks to Pierce’s novel.
Alanna’s female friendships were late in the series, and more peripheral than the close bonds she had with romantic partners. With Daine, Pierce is deliberately trying to surround her with characters that make up for that. Daine has male friends yes, Numair, Sarge, and Evin. But she also has Onua, Alanna, Thayet, and Miri, and dozens of others. It’s not just one woman making friends with men anymore, it a story about a young woman making friends with many different people—animal or human, male or female. It shows how Pierce has grown in just four years.
Overtures in Race
Another thing that Pierce does which shows her slow improvement is how she deals with race. She’s attempting to have a more balanced world, not just one that is your typical white fantasy world. It’s still not perfect, given that there are only seven people of color in the entire novel, and five of them are unnamed. One of the named people is Hakim, a Bazhir from Woman Who Rides Like a Man. He appears on the journey to Corus, a sergeant in the Kings Own. He helps Alanna and Daine fight of the spidrens.
The other character of color in the novel is Sarge. He is one of the three who teach the Queens Riders. He also escaped slavery before coming to Tortall. It’s in part a very stereotypical story, but Sarge is one of the more important new characters. He treats Daine with respect, and helps her learn to make her authority with the trainees. A particularly idiotic trainee had been flirting with Daine instead of listening to her. Sarge intervened on her behalf. He shamed the trainee for both flirting with a Daine and for being unkind to the pony he was supposed to be grooming.
When Daine goes to talk with him afterwards, feeling awkward. Sarge reassures her, and they share what I would describe as a genuinely sweet moment. It’s a moment of solidarity between the two of them. In some ways it mirrors how people from different oppressed groups band together.
Pierce hasn’t fixed all her mistakes, and the book isn’t saying landmark things about race. It doesn’t include many people of color, and most of the ones that do appear are solely window dressing in the background. However, it’s an improvement on her previous handling of race, and is progress.
Daine as Protagonist
Intersectionality is one of the touchstones of third-wave feminism, though it wasn’t unheard of in second-wave feminism. Diane is very much a intersectional character. She’s a female, orphan, refugee, and a bastard in a world where that still matters. Snowsdale, the village that she was born and raised in is implied to be very conservative. Considering Daine’s reaction—almost tears—when she was asked if she wanted to wear pants instead of skirts, it’s not very subtle. She says that the priests and the headman wouldn’t approve, despite not three minutes ago wanting to wear anything other than skirts because of the discomfort.
She initially refuses a book Numair gave her on animal anatomy because she didn’t feel that she deserved it. When she meets Thayet, who she’d thought was a normal person beforehand, she explodes. “Odd’s bobs, this is a strange place! Knights who say call ’em by their first name and wizards who light tinder and queens that run around dressed like real people—” (103-4). When she meets Jonathan, he asks about her father, because she can sense when immortals attack because of her wild magic.But Daine doesn’t know who her father is, so she can’t help.
When entering Tortall, Daine thinks that she’ll get a fresh start, where her entire identity won’t be wound up in her bastardy. Every aspect of her character reflects the different intersections of oppression that Daine experienced. Pierce she shows how discrimination affects Daine as she immerses herself in this new country. During the skirt incident she thinks, “it hit her, really hit her, that she was free of Snowsdale, what could they do to her now?” (110). It doesn’t change everything, but she’s in a place where not everyone will judge her only on her background.
Recovery from Trauma
One of the more important lessons of Wild Magic is about how people handle trauma, and about how people help others.
Kuri’s Monologue
Kuri Tailor is the woman who outfits Daine with pants and shirts. As mentioned above, Daine has some lingering issues about Snowsdale, and Kuri comforts her. “Forget them. …You’re ours, now. …But here life’s what you make it. Who you used to be doesn’t matter. Look at Sarge—he was a slave, once. Onua was beaten by her husband and left to die. Her Majesty and Buri had to flee Saraine. Do you catch my drift?” (112).
This is one of the more thematically important passages of the novel. The novel as a whole is the process of dealing with trauma and recovering from it. One of the most important things that you can hear when you’re trying to recover is that others have done it. Doubly so when those people are there to help you on your path as well. Kuri telling Daine about Sarge’s and Onua’s and Thayet and Buri’s pasts shows her that these successful people struggled. They overcame things that are incredibly difficult to overcome. They survived, and they thrived. That promise, that you can remake yourself, and become someone who isn’t defined by your trauma is essential to hear on the road to recovery.
This is the thesis of the novel yes, but Pierce again shows how it isn’t easy with how Daine handles her twin traumas.
Daine and Grief
Daine is a thirteen year old girl who lost her entire family except a pony less than a year ago. That sort of thing leaves scars, and it’s scars that Pierce allows Daine to show. She’s barely able to mention her family in the first few chapters. When she mentions them afterwards, it’s liable to wind up causing her to snap at other people.
The first time it happens is when she’s meeting Numair, not the hawk he was shape-shifted into for the first time. Numair is incredulous that she doesn’t have the Gift, and Daine explodes. Onua tells Numair that her mother kept testing Daine for the Gift, and that she died recently. Though it’s not a direct mention of her mother, it’s close enough to spark emotions in someone grieving. Also the Gift was a source of tension between her and her mother beforehand, so that also is a factor.
The second major time this happens is when Numair lights a fire with his Gift. Daine’s shock is apparent, and Numair teases her for a moment about needing rituals to cause fire to burn back home. Considering the bandits burnt her home to the ground, Daine stalks off.
Onua told her early on that you need to speak about things, to bleed the poison off the bad memories. Daine eventually does this with her family, talking about them to Onua and Numair, though keeping her other trauma hidden from them until later. Daine feels guilty for having fun, for teasing Numair back and for befriending Onua. Eventually, she realizes that guilt is not what her family would want, and it eases those outbursts of grief.
As before though, it doesn’t go away forever, the pain of losing her family lingers around Daine for the rest of the series.
Daine and Mental Illness
The Good Aspects
While mental illness isn’t precisely the right term for Daine’s experiences hunting the bandits, it’s the closest allegory. She hunted down the bandits who killed her family with the local wolf pack. In return, her village hunted her, for weeks, tried to kill her because of what she’d done. Daine describes it as loosing her humanity. Numair, when told about this, theorizes that her magical bond with animals overwhelms her when near a group of animals. He puts a shield between her magic and her core self, which prevents such a relapse.
However, this only happens halfway through the book. During the first half, Daine discovers going too deep in the lessons Numar gives her will bring out the ‘madness’ again. Because of this, she starts faking her way through the lessons and being very touchy, more so than with her grief earlier. It’s a very good representation of one way that people try to deal with trauma. Daine tries to bottle it all up, tries to pretend that not thinking about it will just make it disappear. It’s a decent representation of that facet of trauma, and it fits with Daine’s character.
The Bad Aspects
But, there is one aspect of this representation that is less appealing. Daine is visited at various times in her dreams by a badger. He gives her advice and tells her he knows her father. He is the one that finally compels her to tell her story to Onua and Numair. At one point he tells her that, “The madness was to teach you something. You should mind the lesson.” (30). These two lines are the opposite of helpful, and the opposite of feminist. Trauma and mental illness are not something that should be handled in this way.
In a fantasy world, there is the possibility that gods try to teach mankind lessons through trials. This was not the case with Daine here. I find it likely that this line of the badger’s is part of why she didn’t tell anyone until so late. She felt she deserved it and if it was a lesson, she should be able to figure out how to solve it on her own. That was counterproductive to the point, and prevents her from healing.
Conclusion
Overall, Wild Magic is a story that has ultimately a feminist takeaway. It’s a story about how a community of people comes together to heal. It’s a story about how there is more than one kind of person. There may be some rough patches and throw away lines, and there are places where Pierce could have pushed more. But whenever I read the epilogue I’m reminded of why this story matters.
Daine starts the story as an orphan, and she ends the story taking in another orphan. After a debate between Thayet, Alanna, George, Numair, and Onua as to where Daine should go and ultimately live, Pierce puts it best. “Daine looked at these unusual people who had become friends, and laughed. ‘It’s fair funny,’ she explained. ‘I’ve gone from having no home to having too many!’ The Lioness smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Welcome to Tortall,’ she said.” (362).
That welcome extends not only to Daine, but to the reader, and it’s a fitting end to the first chapter of Daine’s story.
