History Literature / CircleOfMagic

* ''Battle Magic'' tells the story what happened to Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Gyongxe, events which color the previous two books.

* ''Battle Magic'' will tell the story what happened to Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Gyongxe, events which color the previous two books.

* MeaningfulRename: Initiates of the Living Circle religion take new names (generally nature-related in some way) along with their vows- for example, Rosethorn and Crane used to be Niva and Isas. Secular mages also replace their last names with ones of their own choosing when they master their powers. The four main characters have not taken "mage names" in the usual way; Briar already chose his name and sees no reason to replace it, Sandry is still close to her noble family, and Daja won't forsake her Trader heritage. Tris probably doesn't want people to be more afraid of her power than they are already.

* FreudianExcuse: In ''Shatterglass'', [[spoiler:the killer claims to be the illegitimate child of a yaskedasi and someone of the first class, and was abandoned among the prathumi]]. Tris, however, thinks that this was just a fantasy they made up to justify it.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: In ''Cold Fire'', [[spoiler:Ben Ladradun initially sets his fires to convince the city officials that firefighters are necessary. At first, he was always careful to only set fires to abandoned structures or at times when no one was inside, but when he unintentionally kills a homeless man in one, he realizes he ''likes'' the feeling and that people are listening to boot]].

* ''Battle Magic'' will tell the story what happened to Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Gyonxe, events which color the previous two books.

* BodyHorror: Do ''not'' activate any one of the four main characters' berserk buttons. Some deaths include [[spoiler: being torn and cannibalized by plants, being burned alive from the inside out, and having certain body parts violently ripped away]].

* NotNowKiddo: Rather "not now, homeless semi-madman." Zhegorz gets this when he tries to report the things he's hearing and seeing on the winds.

* ThePowerOfFriendship: Deconstructed; Sandry still wants it to apply, but they've grown older and had so many disperate experiences that they clash more often than not. Then it gets reconstructed.
* StandardRoyalCourt: The Empress Berenene in ''The Will of The Empress'' rules hers with an iron fist, though she piles on the decadence and parties and amusements all she can. Ishabal Ladyhammer does triple-duty as her chief mage, head of her armies, and chief advisor.

* ExtendedDisarming: Briar in Will of the Empress, used to intimidate an opponent. Daja helps by carrying on a casual conversation throughout.

* KnifeNut: Briar, from the very beginning.

''Will of the Empress'' reunites the foursome as they face the titular Empress and her intricate court, and have no time to sort out their issues among themselves (especially in matters romantic) before they have to stay ahead of the Empress' own games.

''Melting Stones'' follows the story of Evvy, Briar's student in ''Street Magic'', as she and Rosethorn investigate the mysterious death of plants in the Battle Islands, concurrent with ''Will of the Empress''

Forthcoming books will cover Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy's adventures in analogue-China on the far side of the world, and Tris as a student at a university for mages.

* AchievementsInIgnorance:
** What Sandry pulled at the end of ''Sandry's Book'' to combine everyone's power. It was supposed to be impossible. It also saved their collective rears, made them all exponentially more powerful, and gave them a telepathic link.
** How Keth creates Chime, a sentient glass dragon.
** Niko continually [[{{Lampshading}} lampshades]] this, especially in ''Briar's Book'', when he tells Tris that the spell on her glasses to see magic wore off only a week after he put it on.
--> "There's an advantage to instructing young mages: suggestion counts for so much with you four."
* AnimatedTattoo: The plant mage Briar.
* AntiMagic: Unmagic in ''Magic Steps''.
* AsleepForDays: In ''Shatterglass'', Tris exhausts her store of magical power and as a result sleeps for a week.

** Tris keeps stored power of wind, storms, lightning, lava, tides, and earthquakes '''in her hair,''' and in ''Shatterglass'' Niko tells the cops [[spoiler: they need to save the serial killer from HER]]

* BigFriendlyDog: Little Bear.
* BilingualBackfire: When the four meet at Discipline Cottage for the first time, Briar rudely asks Daja why Traders wear red for mourning. She explains, and substitutes the rude term for a non-Trader (kaq) with something else. Then Daja looks over at Sandry, who also speaks the Trader language, and says in it, "And he is a ''kaq''." Briar immediately says in Trader-talk, "I haven't spent my life with my fingers in my ears. And I'm not stupid."
* BlackMage: Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler. [[IncrediblyLamePun Literal in Daja's case.]]
* TheBlacksmith: Frostpine, and eventually Daja, have magic connected to everything connected to metalworking.
* BlessedWithSuck: Tris's magic plus her asshole relatives was 100% responsible for her miserable childhood. Even once she's an adult, people are freaked out by it, and she has to deal with hearing voices and seeing things when she doesn't want to. Zhegorz got it even worse -- he was driven insane by a combination of hearing and seeing things on the wind, being ''mistaken'' for insane because he was hearing and seeing things on the wind, and [[ThereAreNoTherapists being]] [[BedlamHouse "treated"]] for his half-existent insanity.
** Tris' student in ''Shatterglass'' also suffers this, having been [[LightningCanDoAnything hit by lightning]] gave him [[PowerIncontinence powers he has no idea how to control]].
** Frostpine in his backstory. His family found out he had magic talent long before he was even old enough to understand he had it, let alone learn to use it. So they get the bright idea to rent his power out to a local hedge wizard. The thing is, having done this, they then conveniently forget to tell their son that he even has magic at all. So one day their client dies, and Frostpine finds out the whole deal in the worst way possible: by getting all of his considerable power back in one go. It's thus understandable when he flips his shit after Daja lends her power to Sandry for a few days while she tries to separate them; later, when he cools off and fully understands the situation, he does acknowledge that he may have overreacted, considering he knows Sandry is trustworthy and all.
* BodyHorror: Do ''not'' activate any one of the four main characters' berserk buttons. Some deaths include [[spoiler: being torn and cannibalized by plants, being burned alive from the inside out, and having certain body parts violently ripped away]].

** Of particular note is Sandry, the most dutiful and altruistic of the four, who gets a scolding from her uncle, the Duke, at the start of ''The Will of the Empress.'' He guilt-trips her because she doesn't ''immediately'' start reading reports from her cousin in Namorn. Bear in mind that she always reads the reports - she's just a little slower to do so than she is to attend to matters in Emelan. Also bear in mind that she has taken over much of the Duke's work at this point.
* ChillyReception: The four protagonists are all given a hard time when they arrive at Winding Circle, resulting in their removal to Discipline Cottage.
* CircleOfFriendship: In the first book, the protagonists are trapped in a cave during an earthquake, and using a circle of woven thread Sandry had on her from the beginning, they infuse it with their magics and somehow cause the cave to not crush them and the thread gives off light so they can see (Sandry is afraid of the dark). This thread goes on to have more significance later.
* ContinuityNod: It's pretty heavily implied that Nory from ''Melting Stones'' is daughter of the Pirate Queen Tris killed in ''The Power In The Storm''.
** There's also a subtle one in ''Shatterglass''. When Tris was learning to scry on the wind she ends up looking out to a city with an inappropriately-placed small jungle glowing with Briar's magic ([[spoiler:from the climax of ''Street Magic'']]).
*** An even subtler one in the same book, when Tris is first scrying, she sees a wooden building on fire with people rushing around it, possibly one of the buildings from ''Cold Fire''.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Okay, without it there wouldn't be a series. But seriously, what were the odds that four mages of an ''unheard-of'' level of power were all born around the same time, all lost their parents in some way as they grew up, while meanwhile their magic -- even in its more ordinary aspects -- was somehow missed by everybody who might have noticed it, until they all just happened to discover it at the same time -- and Niko, luckily, had scryed that this would happen, decided to follow up on it, and went around the world collecting them. In Sandry's, Daja's and probably Briar's cases, he also happened to be just in time to ''save their lives''. Go figure, eh?
** [[MST3KMantra Call it destiny, OK?]]
** When they first met, they were only minor mages. Then something involved with patterns and magic becoming stronger (it's handwaved in ''Magic Steps'' and ''Daja's Book'') involves their actually becoming magically stronger as the plot goes along.
** The books do address both parts, in fact all four characters are shocked that nobody noticed they had magic, apparently their style of magic, which must be used through certain objects like plants, thread, or forged metal, is rather hard to detect. And they were all said to be above average in power before being trapped in a collapsed mine forced them to combine their magic, essentially mixing their souls together. They unknowingly performed an insanely dangerous ritual to drastically boost their powers. Niko's magic is related to vision, and he can see magic.
** Their powers had at least partially manifested itself earlier in various character traits (eg. Daja's liking smithing, Sandry's penchant for embroidery) or in ways that didn't make it obvious it was magic (Briar's incident with the rose vine during a burglary, Tris's apparent 'possession' by demons and various weird phenomena).
*** And it just so happens that for 3 out of the 4, they didn't often encounter their area of expertise in their homes (Traders are merchants, not craftsmen, so Daja wouldn't have much opportunity to see her prowess at blacksmithing; Sandry, as a noble, wouldn't get to do much complex work with thread and mentioned sneaking out at night to sew more; Briar lived in a big city and wouldn't have encountered plants very often. Tris is the only one whose power manifested often, and that led to everyone believing that she was possessed because she didn't appear to have academic magic).
**** It's said in The Circle Opens books that most magic-sniffers find academic magic, since ambient mages draw their power from outside sources. There ARE mages who can detect ambient magic, but they're much rarer. Not to mention that none of their families knew much about magic, so they wouldn't have known anything about the differences between academic and ambient magic. Finally, Niko scried them ahead of time, at different instances. It's what he does. It's also explicitly stated that magic gets stronger as you work with it and practice, and that one reason that the four are so powerful is that because of the series of events that happened throughout the first series, they had to use and control their magic in ways that adults don't usually have to deal with. Because their magic was breaking out all the time thanks to being spun together, they had to learn strict control.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Glass and lightning, although the guy with them has a ''lot'' of trouble getting the hang of it.
* CourtlyLove: Briar has this toward Berenene in ''Will of the Empress''. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]].
* CrazyHomelessPeople: Zhegorz. See BlessedWithSuck, above. At least [[spoiler: the end of ''Will of the Empress'' suggests he'll be able to function relatively normally in society from now on.]]
* CripplingOverspecialization: Any child with magic born into a Trader family is expected to undergo this type of [[TrainingFromHell training]] which results in a mage with a very limited scope of abilities but near perfect mastery of them. [[labelnote: *]] Trader mages are said to be the only ones capable of manipulating and controlling the raw forces of nature without issue. [[/labelnote]] Nico himself describes Trader mage training as "learning to be a puff of wind...and nothing else for 10 years".
* DarkIsNotEvil: Unmagic, despite the horror-inducing description from a mage viewpoint. [[spoiler: The one using it is just a kid, and enslaved at that]].
* DebtDetester: All Traders, according to Polyam.
* DefrostingIceQueen: Dedicate Crane. When he first appears in ''The Magic In The Weaving'' he looks like a frosty, arrogant, semi-competent, complete snob and a villain who is going to make the protagonists' lives a living hell. Watch him at work with people he trusts and respects in ''The Healing in The Vine'', and with [[spoiler: Rosethorn when she starts to get sick]], and you realise there's a lot more than that going on with him. He and Rosethorn just can't ever quite manage to have a ''civil'' discussion about their different methods, that's all...
* DemocracyIsBad: A view espoused by Tris when she visits the city-state of Tharios (which makes a certain amount of sense as she grew up in monarchies that had good rulers). Although it's run by a representative government, those representatives all come from the high tiers of its FantasticCasteSystem, so it's not exactly the most shining example.
* DeterminedHomesteader: Sandrilene shows this side of herself in ''The Will of the Empress'' - she is determined to own and take care of her land no matter how the Empress threatens her. [[spoiler: But in the end her friends pressure her into giving it up - fortunately it goes into good hands.]]
* DirtyHarriet: ''Shatterglass'', a serial killer stalks the female ''yaskedasi,'' members of the entertainment class. Quite a few police officers (of both genders, but mostly women) go undercover as ''yaskedasi,'' but this is played logically when someone points out that the grimly staring few who can't dance, juggle, or sing ''really'' stick out.
* FaintingSeer: Zhegorz.
* FamilyOfChoice: Daja, Sandry, Tris, and Briar are rescued from similarly isolated backgrounds and brought to a school of magic where they immediately form a strong bond. Especially Sandry and Daja, since Sandry, responding to an act of cruel injustice by a third girl, takes an "us against the world" approach before she even knows Daja's name. The family can also be seen to include the children's teachers, especially Lark and Rosethorn who live with the children as well as teach them. By the end of their stories, the children even refer to each other as siblings.
* FantasyContraception: Briar makes use of this in ''Empress''.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Not an exact fit, but there is a case to be made. Briar is the one that's most iffy.

** Melancholic: Briar (independent nature but still likable, creative, and he does suffer from PTSD, so you could say depression prone)

* FreudianExcuse: In ''Cold Fire'', [[spoiler: Ben Ladradun]], and in ''Shatterglass'', [[spoiler:the killer claims to be the illegitimate child of a yaskedasi and someone of the first class, and was abandoned among the prathumi]].
** Although for the latter example Tris immediately speculates that the excuse was a fantasy made up by the killer.
* FriendToAllLivingThings: If there's a such thing as a plant version of this, Briar is it.
** His student, Evvy, takes this one step further by being a friend to rocks.
*** And Tris is a friend to lightning, and Daja to metal.
*** In fact, that's the ''entire difference'' between academic magic (textbooks and rituals), and ambient magic (what the protagonists have - very powerful, but limited in scope). They have power, because they make 'friends' with whatever they have affinity with. (Remember Sandry's first magic lesson, petting and ordering the scared bits of wool?) ... Briar and Rosethorn have more of this than most of the characters, but only because plants are also alive in the usual sense.
* FriendshipTrinket: The main characters have a string circle containing their united magic which represents their friendship.
* GoodIsNotNice: Tris. When her student asks her if she's really nice during ''Shatterglass'', she actually blushes.
** Also, Rosethorn. Both of them have {{Tsundere}} tendencies.
* GreenRocks: Daja's living metal, which she's used to make everything from prosthetic limbs to fireproof gloves to scrying mirrors to ''earplugs and eyeglasses'' for [[spoiler:Zhegorz]] that filter out distant, ''magically-detected images'' from nearby, physical ones. It's not even a hundred percent clear why her hand keeps producing more metal in the first place, since it was a finite amount that melted on her. Her metal tree, for instance, only kept growing once they stuck it in the ground and it had copper to draw on -- it couldn't make living metal from nothing. Maybe her cells taught it how to replicate. [[HandWave Or something]].
** She mentions in a later book that it only grows very slowly, likely leeching copper from her body. To actually make something she takes a small amount of the metal and mixes it with brass and her own blood.
* GreenThumb: Briar's (and Rosethorn's) type of magic.
* GrowingUpSucks: Central theme in ''Will of the Empress''. [[spoiler: Averted -- eventually -- when the four accept that there really ''are'' some attitudes from childhood that you would do well to keep, such as trust, openness and optimism. Their "grown up" cynicism gets them ''into'' trouble -- their recovered trust and idealism ''saves'' them from it.]]
* HandOrObjectUnderwear: A man does this while shouting at Sandry when she unravels his clothes, as well as the clothes of twenty others who tried to kidnap her.
* HeroicBSOD: As ''Empress'' opens, Briar seems to be suffering [=PTSD/BPD=] from an unspecified event, most noticeably a newly developed tendency to sleep with any woman willing to hold still. Turns out [[spoiler:he and Rosethorn got caught in a war]].
* HeroicRROD - [[spoiler: Yarrun. Not truly hero, but otherwise fits the trope completely]]
* HeroicSafeMode: How Sandry has to operate in ''Magic Steps'' to [[spoiler: weave a net of unmagic.]]

* HonorBeforeReason: Evvy in ''Melting Stones'' when [[spoiler: she returns to the volcanic island to rescue the little girl she had scared into running off at an earlier point]].
** A lot of the trouble the kids get into in the first quartet has to do with simply not knowing better, but Briar knew ''exactly'' what he was doing when he [[spoiler:brought Rosethorn back from death]] against Lark's stern warning.
** For Traders, survivor's guilt isn't a post-trauma disorder; it's a cultural institution. Traders who survive major catastrophes that wipe out most of their ship/caravan are considered to be the cause thereof, and are branded unlucky and excommunicated from Trader society. It's practically unheard of, once a Trader has been outcast in this fashion, for them to be reinstated into Trader society, and any Trader that wants to deal with them must wear special makeup and go through a ritual cleansing for each meeting. This is all important to the plot from Sandry's Book to Daja's Book, as it all happens to Daja.
* ILetGwenStacyDie: Happens to [[spoiler: Kethlun]] on [[spoiler: Yali]]'s account in ''Shatterglass,'' combined with StuffedInTheFridge. It's especially surprising for ''Tamora Pierce'' of all people to create a DisposableWoman.
* ImpactSilhouette: Daja, keeping herself warm through magic, melts a perfect outline of herself in the snow when she falls into a bank of it in ''Cold Fire''. The onlookers are puzzled.
* InfantImmortality: Averted in the ''Circle Opens: Magic Steps'' when a baby is specifically mentioned as being killed during a massacre. Children are killed at several points during that quartet.
* InsultToRocks: Olennika once called the local mages "parasites". Heluda Salt thinks that this is insulting to parasites, since at least parasites are useful in that they're able to be a meal for other creatures.
** In Tris' Book, a guard calls pirates 'dogs' and then turns to Little Bear and says, "No offense to four-legged dogs"
* InverseLawOfUtilityAndLethality: Tris's powers suffer from this.
* KarmicDeath: In ''Cold Fire'', it's mentioned that arsonists are burned alive. Sure enough, [[spoiler:Ben is sentenced to be burned alive]]. However, [[spoiler:Daja and several others]] end up [[ShootTheDog making it quicker and less painful]].
* LethalHarmlessPowers: All over the place.
* LightningCanDoAnything: Tris's student was an average, talented glass blower before he was hit by lightning. He's still partly paralysed and shell-shocked from it, and had to re-learn glass blowing from the ground up -- only to discover he'd manifested unpredictable ambient magic related to glass and lightning, and it's up to Tris to help him learn to control it.
** It's stated that this is because he was already a not-very-powerful ambient glass mage.
* LipstickLesbian: Rizuka fa Dalach, Wardrobe Mistress of the Empress of Namorne is a lesbian.
* MagicDance: In ''Magic Steps'', the power exhibited by the young mage boy Sandry finds.

* AManIsNotAVirgin: Briar (as of ''Empress'') So, so much.
** Though, this is actually attributed to his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a result of the [[spoiler: wars in Gyongxe]], he has nightmares when he sleeps alone, and thus seeks to share his bed with another whenever possible.
* MeaningfulRename: Initiates of the Living Circle religion take new names (generally nature-related in some way) along with their vows- for example, Rosethorn and Crane used to be Niva and Isas. Secular mages also replace their last names with ones of their own choosing when they master their powers. The four main characters have not taken "mage names" in the usual way; Briar already chose his name and sees no reason to replace it, but the girls' reasons haven't been spelled out.
** Sandry most likely didn't because she is still very close to her noble family and doesn't want to give that up, Daja has made it clear that she will not forsake her Trader heritage, including her name. Not sure about Tris though...
** Tris doesn't want people to be any more afraid of her power than they already are.
* [[spoiler: MeaninglessVillainVictory]]: In ''Will of the Empress'', [[spoiler: Empress Berenene's goal was to get Sandry to Namorn and married off to one of her pawns so that the sizable income from Sandry's estates went into the imperial coffers and not Emelan's. She also wanted the services of Sandry's friends (a powerful weather mage, smith mage, and garden mage) to strengthen her rule. In the end, Tris, Daja, and Briar reject the offers of wealth and power and manage to get Sandry out of the country. Berenene does partially get what she wants as Sandry is forced to sign over her land and titles to her seneschal in order to keep the Empress from trying the same thing again later.]]
* MedievalStasis: Averted; technology is shown to be in visible motion. The first quartet has greenhouses as a recent innovation, and sophisticated quarantine instructions and an astonishingly scientific approach to studying and treating plagues have both been developed within the past twenty years. Said approach involves distilling the "essence" of the disease using fluid samples from infected patients. Pirates also appear to have developed gunpowder very recently.
** Later on in the series, there's also mention of the new land discovered across the Endless Sea.
* MommyIssues: [[spoiler:Ben Ladradun]].

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In ''Cold Fire'', it turns out that [[spoiler: the fire-proof gloves Daja makes out of living metal for Ben allows him to start even more fires in the city, since HE was the arsonist they had all been hunting]].
* NoAntagonist: Out of the first quartet, there's only a real antagonist in ''The Power in the Storm''.
* NobodyPoops: Averted. ''Prathmuni'' having the duty of taking away the "night soil" - the contents of chamberpots - is brought up in ''Shatterglass''. Characters use said chamberpots, and a character offering to take a love interest's full pot out because the love interest is tired is treated as a minor thing.
* NoDeadBodyPoops: Averted in the death of one of the gang members and other strangling deaths in the series.
* NoodleIncident: Between the Circle Of Magic and The Circle Opens, Briar attempted to tattoo his hands to cover up his prison tats. [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued.]]
** In ''Briar's Book'', Rosethorn compares the taste of willowbark tea to horse urine. Lark informs her that horse urine tastes much nastier, but refuses to explain how she knows.
** At some point, the four tried alcohol. This ended with a barn being utterly destroyed.
** In ''Daja's Book'' Frostpine is amused at a strange accidental creation of Daja's and says ''his'' magic got away from him once, but refuses to tell us what happened. It involved spousal jealousy, not that he knew she was married. Not that he'd asked.
* NotGoodWithPeople: Rosethorn and (to a lesser extent) Briar. Also Evvy and Tris.
* NotNowKiddo: Averted for the most part. Notably Tris's ability to hear voice on the wind and see magic (which gets passed on to all four of the children). Niko even tells her to come to him if she sees or hears anything.
** Played semi-straight with Zhegorz near the end of ''Empress,'' although it's more like "not now madman" in that case.
** Subverted and later played straight but justified in ''Tris's Book''. The adult mages usually take the kids' observations as worth listening to, with Frostpine even encouraging Daja to report odd observations. But late in the book during a pirate attack, the adults spend most of a day [[spoiler: playing damage control after a cannonball hits something nearby]], and return exhausted and burned. In the mean time the kids have discovered that Tris can [[ShockAndAwe create lightning]], but after the first few "Not now"s they don't see a good chance to mention it.
* TheOneGuy: Briar. Among the four, 3:1; in the house, it's five to one, and later his student is also female.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Played straight in the first four ''Circle of Magic'' books then deconstructed (and [[ZigZaggingTrope reconstructed]]) in ''Will of the Empress''.
* PyroManiac: The arsonist in ''Cold Fire''. [[spoiler: Who turns out to not have any powers at all]].
* ReallyGetsAround: Briar by the time of ''Empress''. Deconstructed, as he's [[spoiler:really suffering from PTSD]].
* RenownedSelectiveMentor: Tris is trained by Niko, the super duper famous mage. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that the rules of magic dictate it.
** Specifically, any mage that discovers magic in someone is responsible for teaching them or finding a mage with the same kind of magic to take over instruction. Briar, Sandry, and Daja have Rosethorn, Lark, and Frostpine to teach them, but mages who can control lightning like Tris are both rare and [[PowerIncontinence tend to get themselves killed young]] so Niko is responsible. Given that one of his skills is finding mages, one wonders how often it's happened to him over the years. [[FridgeLogic Maybe that's why he goes out of his way to meet so many mages]] -- so he'll know where to send students.
** Addressed in ''Cold Fire'' when the local celebrity cook-mage tests Jory before agreeing to train her, being accustomed to dumb kids trying to get her attention but who can't actually do magic or [[WaxOnWaxOff handle her workload]]. [[spoiler: Jory proves that she has the power and the determination to succeed.]]
** Rosethorn, Lark, and Frostpine are also apparently quite famous - the main characters are shocked when Crane tells them they all have practically royalty-class mentors. Their teachers were simply the best teachers for them and saw no reason to mention their fame.

** [[spoiler: Zhegorz]] also counts as an aversion, as his powers didn't come with the ability to [[spoiler: tune them out]], or even [[spoiler: make sense of them]].
* SharpDressedMan: Niko, with a touch of TheDandy.
* ShipperOnDeck: Sandry for the Duke and Yazmín in ''Magic Steps''.
* SiblingsInCrime: The two pirate leaders from ''Tris's Book'', "Queen" Pauha and her chief mage Enahar.
* SiblingYinYang: Jory and Nia from ''Cold Fire''.

* SittingOnTheRoof: A favorite pasttime of the main characters.
* StandardRoyalCourt: The Empress Berenene in ''The Will of The Empress'' rules hers with an iron fist, though she piles on the decadence and parties and amusements all she can. Ishabal Ladyhammer does triple-duty as her chief mage, head of her armies, and chief advisor.
* StreetUrchin: Both Briar and his student Evvy start out this way.
* SugarAndIcePersonality: Rosethorn is a cross between this and a {{Tsundere}}.
* SuperpowerLottery: Tris. The girl has an insane amount of power, able to control all kinds of weather, ''plus'' tap into earthquakes and volcanoes, ''and'' can perform academic magic, ''and'' learns the extremely rare ability of scrying the wind without going mad (which is the usual side-effect).
** And then has to develop the self-control of a Buddhist monk in order not to kill everyone around her, and suffers for being able to scry the winds. Between the reaction from other mages and the constant headaches and nausea, it's bordering on BlessedWithSuck territory.
** Also: No job prospects. Fighting makes her sick and she doesn't really have enough control to do anything else.
*** She could work as a weather mage, but is [[ComesGreatResponsibility too responsible to mess with the climate]].
*** She'd most like to be a healer-mage but admits that even after eight years of meditation and practice, her control isn't tight enough unless they "wanted her to do surgery with a mallet."
** Two words: PowerIncontinence. It's official: Being Tris ''sucks''.
* TantrumThrowing: In ''Will of the Empress'', after Daja finds out her love interest isn't going to come with her when they leave Namorn, she locks herself up in her room, crying. Tris comes in to yell at her for tossing a fit and snapping at Zhegorz and Daja throws a dish at her, which Tris ducks away from. The next thing Daja throws, Tris bats away with her wind magic.

* ThemeTable
* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: In the ''Shatterglass,'' the serial killer turns out to be [[spoiler:one of the Hindu Untouchable/Dalit {{Expy}} characters who have been constantly on the outskirts of the protagonists' radar, cleaning, being abused, and biding their time]].
* TitleDrop: "Will of the empress" is dropped word for word twice, with "her will" and "imperial will" several more times.
* TooDumbToLive: Everyone trying to kidnap Sandry. Let's face it, even if they managed to keep ''her'' magic bound, they'd still have to spend the rest of their lives fearing metal, plants... and also [[EverythingTryingToKillYou air, water, and ground]].
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The Booklist summary on the Amazon.com page for ''Empress'' revealed the plot twist that [[spoiler:Daja likes girls]]. Surprise!
** There was also the map at the front of the book that loudly announced that [[spoiler:Shan kidnaps Sandry]].

** ''The Will of the Empress'' is a spectacular DeconReconSwitch of this trope, forcing the four to examine what exactly their relationship means to them.

* UnstoppableRage: Don't piss Tris off.
** [[spoiler:Kidnap Briar's student Evvy and have him find out you've been using people as cheap and easy fertilizer]], and he'll tear your assassin to pieces with thorny vines. A little later, Evvy [[spoiler:drops a floor on her kidnapper]].
* WellIntentionedExtremist: In ''Cold Fire''; [[spoiler:Ben Ladradun initially sets his fires to convince the city officials that firefighters are necessary. At first, he was always careful to only set fires to abandoned structures or at times when no one was inside, but he found an incredible thrill when he came across the body of a homeless person who'd died in a fire, ''then'' found that people listened to him more after the death]].
* WordOfGay: Tamora Pierce stated while writing the series that one of the characters was homosexual, with fans puzzling out who it was. She later confirmed that it was [[spoiler:Daja]].
** Somewhat averted in Will of the Empress, when [[spoiler:Daja develops a relationship with Rizu, the Empress's Mistress of the Wardrobe.]] Also, in the same book, a relationship between [[spoiler:Lark and Rosethorn]] is heavily implied.
--> [[spoiler:"Daja, why didn't you say you're a ''nisamohi''?" he asked, using the Tradertalk word for a woman who loved other women. "What with Lark and Rosethorn, did you think we cared?"]]
* WrongContextMagic: In ''Magic Steps,'' Sandry has to figure out a mage whose magic somehow manipulates sheer ''nothingness.'' His magic is so drastically different from anything seen before or since it may count as this.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Any child with magic born into a Trader family is expected to undergo this type of [[TrainingFromHell training]] which results in a mage with a very limited scope of abilities but near perfect mastery of them. [[Labelnote: *]] Trader mages are said to be the only ones capable of manipulating and controlling the raw forces of nature without issue. [[/Labelnote]] Nico himself describes Trader mage training as "learning to be a puff of wind...and nothing else for 10 years".

* DeterminedHomesteader: Sandriliene shows this side of herself in ''The Will of the Empress'' - she is determined to own and take care of her land no matter how the Empress threatens her. [[spoiler: But in the end her friends pressure her into giving it up - fortunately it goes into good hands.]]

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Emelan seems to be Mediterranean/southern European. The other small countries surrounding them are the rest of Europe; Namorn is Russia and Tharios is Greece (with the caste system borrowed from Japan, specifically the geisha and the burakumin). Sotat and nearby countries are west/central Asia. Yanjing is China.

* BlackMage: Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler.

** Sandry in ''Will of the Empress'' [[spoiler: leaves a party of mages and her too-ardent suiter cocooned in what used to be their clothing]], and in "Magic Steps," [[spoiler: uses her magic to tear the killers apart. It's also mentioned she held her uncle's soul in his body while the healers did their work.]]

* MagicDance: In ''Magic Steps'', the power exhibited by the young mage boy Sandry finds.

* DefrostingIceQueen: Arguably, Dedicate Crane. When he first appears in ''The Magic In The Weaving'' he looks like a frosty, arrogant, semi-competent, complete snob and a villain who is going to make the protagonists' lives a living hell. Watch him at work with people he trusts and respects in ''The Healing in The Vine'', and with [[spoiler: Rosethorn when she starts to get sick]], and you realise there's a lot more than that going on with him. He and Rosethorn just can't ever quite manage to have a ''civil'' discussion about their different methods, that's all...

*** For Traders, survivor's guilt isn't a post-trauma disorder; it's a cultural institution. Traders who survive major catastrophes that wipe out most of their ship/caravan are considered to be the cause thereof, and are branded unlucky and excommunicated from Trader society. It's practically unheard of, once a Trader has been outcast in this fashion, for them to be reinstated into Trader society, and any Trader that wants to deal with them must wear special makeup and go through a ritual cleansing for each meeting. This is all important to the plot from Sandry's Book to Daja's Book, as it all happens to Daja.

* MedievalStasis: The first quartet has greenhouses as a recent innovation, and sophisticated quarantine instructions and an astonishingly scientific approach to studying and treating plagues have both been developed within the past twenty years. Said approach involves distilling the "essence" of the disease using fluid samples from infected patients. Pirates also appear to have developed gunpowder very recently.

* SharpDressedMan: Niko.

** Deconstructed and reconstructed in ''Cold Fire'' when the local celebrity cook-mage tests Jory before agreeing to train her, being accustomed to dumb kids trying to get her attention but who can't actually do magic or [[WaxOnWaxOff handle her workload]]. [[spoiler: Jory proves that she has the power and the determination to succeed.]]

** Deconstructed and reconstructed in ''Cold Fire'' when the local celebrity cook-mage refuses to train Jory, being accustomed to dumb kids trying to get her attention but who can't actually do magic or [[WaxOnWaxOff handle her workload]]. [[spoiler: Jory proves that she has the power and the determination to succeed.]]

* TheOneGuy: Briar.

* AchievementsInIgnorance: What Sandry pulled at the end of ''Sandry's Book'' to combine everyone's power. It was supposed to be impossible. It also saved their collective rears, made them all exponentially more powerful, and gave them a telepathic link.

* DarkIsNotEvil: Unmagic, despite the NightmareFuel inducing description from a mage viewpoint. [[spoiler: The one using it is just a kid, and enslaved at that]].

* NobodyPoops: ''Prathmuni'' having the duty of taking away the "night soil" - the contents of chamberpots - is brought up in ''Shatterglass''. Characters use said chamberpots, and a character offering to take a love interest's full pot out because the love interest is tired is treated as a minor thing.
* NoDeadBodyPoops: Averted in the death of one of the gang members.

* SuperpowerLottery: Tris. The girl has an insane amount of power, able to control all kinds of weather, ''plus'' tap into earthquakes and volcanoes, ''and'' can perform academic magic, ''and'' has the extremely rare ability of scrying the wind.