Briar's Book by Tamora Pierce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The four books in the Circle of Magic really do a great job of building on each other and growing the characters as the stories progress. As the final book in the quartet, Briar's Book did not disappoint!

Once again, the antagonist of the story is more what than who. The basic plot is that there is a plague outbreak (a situation that I believe we can all empathize with a little too well these days). Briar and his teacher Rosethorn are at the epicenter. Pierce does a great job of describing what it's like to be in quarantine, the difficulties of finding a cure, and the stress and paranoia that sets into a society when they can't tell who might be sick and who is not. She also dealt tactfully with the fact that not every person can be saved in such a situation. Sometimes people have to make hard decision.

For a book with so many difficult themes, Pierce wove a wonderfully entertaining tale that kept my daughter eagerly engaged to the very end. Probably my only complaint is that the sequel series seems to be out of print, so I can't easily grant my daughter's pleas to read more about these characters that she's come to love.

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