Squeee!

We went to the library on Saturday, and I got Wintersmith, and I tripped over Tamora Pierce's latest: Terrier, first in the Beka Cooper series! I thought that wasn't coming out until sometime this year! Turns out that was the paperback version, but the feeling of idiocy was worth it for that lovely tight feeling in my chest when I found out I was wrong. If I'd been anywhere but in the library, I would have squealed, and I nearly did anyway. Apart from Wintersmith and Terrier, I got The Corinthian and The Masqueraders, both by Georgette Heyer, and which I haven't read in months. We also got A Series of Unfortunate Events four through seven, the first three having been checked out earlier. Lemony Snicket is quite a success: all three boys are reading his books. I am too, just not yet at the rate they are yet.
The Beka Cooper series is written in journal form. This is Tammy's first time for the first-person point of view, and I think she's managing fairly well. I think she's been reading and rereading Terry Pratchett's Night Watch for some of her research, because there are some echoes. Beka is on the Evening Watch, but all the useless misfits are Night Watch. That fits. Anyway, this story takes place two hundred years before Song of the Lioness, before slavery and lady knights vanished from Tortall. The immortals were banished two hundred years before Beka, though. Oh, yes: Alanna's purple-eyed cat, Faithful, did not come down from the stars for the first time to help her. Oh no. The Cat constellation is missing from the sky, and for four years Beka has been feeding a black cat with purple eyes who is decidedly uncat-like at times and can make himself understood when he wishes. She calls him Pounce. Also among Beka's friends are pigeons, dust spinners, lady knight Sabine of Macayhill, and members of the Court of the Rogue. I'm praying that she doesn't get romantically involved with Rosto, but there isn't much hope. Go read it before I give it all away.
The next books on my waiting list are Terry's Making Money and Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven. Alas, I have no idea when the former comes out, and there's no hope of Dragonhaven debuting before September, which means I'll be lucky to read it by Christmas if I depend on the library. If I'm really lucky I'll find it at the bookstore and have money and an aquiescent parent by me.

On June fifteenth, next month, I'll be fourteen. It is an odd feeling, since I haven't been thinking about it much. I have been thinking about the ages of Tammy's heroines. Alanna is nine or ten in the first book, Daine is thirteen in Wild Magic, Kel is ten in the first Protector of the Small, Aly is fifteen in her first, and Beka is sixteen in Terrier. I was eleven or twelve when I read Wild Magic and Wolf Speaker, a couple of months and one birthday older when I read Song of the Lioness (except for In the Hand of the Goddess), and twelve when I read Protector of the Small. It was around then that I read my first Pratchett, Feet of Clay, as well.

Note: Most of this post was written on Tuesday or Wednesday, only Blogger was having problems so I couldn't post it.