Literary Love: Rhiannon Hart

There's only a few days left until Valentines Day but here at See Michelle Read, Literary Love is still in full swing! Today our guest blogger is the lovely Rhiannon Hart. Rhiannon is a wonderful writer and just so happens to enjoy a good dystopian novel almost as much as I do. For your reading pleasure she's here today, all set to discuss the awesomeness that is the incomparable Tamora Pierce.

Don't forget to vote for your top Literary Love couples before Valentines Day!

********

One of the things I love best about Tamora Pierce's writing is that she, like Judy Blume, isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Premarital teen sex happens! Omigosh! Pierce made her name with the Song of the Lioness quartet, affectionately known among fans as "the Alanna books". After copping a lot of flack about their sexual and violent content, she wrote another fantasy romance that had some readers feeling squeamish: the Immortals quartet, starring Veralidaine Sarrasri (Daine) and Numair Salmalin (aka Arram Draper). Daine is a thirteen-year-old orphan who has a lot of untamed and unmanageable wild magic when she meets Numair, a man in his late twenties and Tortall's most powerful mage. With his help she begins to learn how to harness the power of her wild magic, of which she has a considerable amount. Along the way they battle Stormwings and evil emperors and generally save the world. There are the most fantastic battles in these books!Daine is effectively Numair's student and more than half his age--not to mention terribly underage. Now, I have always had a thing for older men and have been known to gaze longingly after the odd teacher, lecturer or lab tutor in my time. In fact, one ponytailed lecturer I had at uni used to wander into the theatre barefoot in charmingly rustic clothes, and he reminded me distinctly of Numair. What a happy semester that was! But before I go on I should clarify something: Numair and Daine might begin to fall in love in book one but nothing actually happens until book four when Daine is seventeen and she's not his student anymore. Nothing touchy-feely, at least. The affection and love between the pair is heart-breakingly sweet. For those who have read them, the scene in Emperor Mage (if I remember correctly) when Daine realizes Numair is Numair and not a simulacrum? Gah! Gets me every time.

Pierce has defended the romance between Numair and Daine by saying that in medieval times--the period in which she places her invented world--girls married at a young age and often to much older men. Also, by the time they acknowledge their love, Daine is Numair's magical equal and they are the same emotional age. Pierce has also admitted a fondness for older men, and in Numair she has created a doozy.

Tamora Pierce's books are filled with magic, adventure and romance. None are more dear to my heart than the four that feature a girl who runs with wolves and has a permanent menagerie of animals, both natural and magical, and a gangly, absent-minded but supremely powerful mage.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

series reading order:
~ Wild Magic
~ Wolf-Speaker
~ Emperor Mage
~ The Realms of the Gods