Briar’s Book

Tamora Pierce

Briar was brought up as a street rat from age 4. Now he finds it hard to balance his gang upbringing with his new life at the temple. With plague on the way, Briar must learn new skills quickly. But will it be fast enough to save those he loves?

This book is told almost entirely from Briar’s point of view. The progress of the plot is rapid, and you will find it difficult to break away from the narrative. Pierce is a master craftswoman, filling out characters seemlessly with the books that came before.

The ending of this book is gripping, you won’t want to put it down. It didn’t take me very long to reread this book, but if you are reading for the first time you may want to dedicate more time to enjoying events.

Of the books in this quartet, this one is the most disturbing for me. I don’t enjoy the plague at all, as it’s easy to be reminded of swine flu. The close calls of a number of friends of the four children are very close to home for me.

Sadly for me, as you can see in the above picture, I have the hardcopy version of this book which was sent to me by mistake. As an Australian customer, I find it too expensive to send things back. If anyone would like to swap this book with me for the paperback version, I would love for my collection to be matching!

I’d recommend this book for children and teenagers. There are some ugly parts of the book, but nothing that I feel is too out there. If you have read through the first three books, nothing in this book will be a surprise.