History Literature / CircleOfMagic

Now has its own [[Characters/CircleOfMagic character page]]. Not to be confused with the 6-book series ''The Circle of Magic'' written by James D. [=MacDonald=] and Debra Doyle.

* BigFriendlyDog: Little Bear.

* GoodDocBadDoc: The first three books, a rivalry is set up between Rosethorn, one of the main characters' teacher/foster mother, who's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold who due to her GreenThumb genuinely cares for the things she plants. Dedicate Crane, however, is described as petty, mean and much more interested in personal gain. When a plague sweeps the city, forcing them to work together as researchers, these roles just get enforced, with Crane seeming overly cruel to his underlings. [[spoiler:Eventually subverted, when its proven that Crane's strictness was there for ''very'' [[JerkassHasAPoint good reasons]], and he genuinely works hard to help cure the disease.]]

* NoAntagonist: The only real villains are the pirates in ''Tris's Book''. The other three books have them face natural disasters — there are characters with antagonistic elements throughout, but they are fairly minor. Bullies don't hunt our characters down, a prideful mage doesn't give more trouble than passive-aggressive comments, Dedicate Crane is a perfectionist but for a reason, and not vindictive. Offscreen characters set off two of the disasters without any intent to do harm.

* PreserveYourGays: Averted in ''Briar's Book'', where [[spoiler:Rosethorn, who is Lark's lover,]] is the only member of Discipline Cottage to actually die from the blue pox, but [[spoiler:not permanently, since Briar managed to leap into the afterworld and convince her to come back, with the help of his mates and a little intimidation.]] Nor is it even known at that point that they are lovers.

* RealityEnsues: In ''Briar's Book'', Tris and Niko have to investigate the city's AbsurdlySpaciousSewer. Standard fantasy fare... except that they go in wearing protective gear and ''both'' of them freak out at having to wade through knee-deep human waste with unseen lumps occasionally colliding with their boots.
* RenownedSelectiveMentor: Niko, the incredibly famous vision mage, personally trains Tris the weather mage. The children later learn that Rosethorn, Lark, and Frostpine are equally renowned mages. {{Justified}} due to the law about discovering mages — they have to find a teacher in that field of magic, and if one can't be found, they must teach the student themselves (which is the case with Tris; weather mages are quite rare).

* TheBlacksmith: Frostpine, and eventually Daja, have magic connected to everything connected to metalworking (for example, they aren't bothered by extreme heat and can touch molten metal with their bare skin). Frostpine's other apprentice, Kirel, has limited abilities related only to iron and lacks their SecondaryPowers like heat resistance. He has to outfit himself in realistic blacksmith fashion.

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: ''Sandry's Book'' is all about this. None of the kids fit into their original dorms, for various reasons, which is why they're brought to Discipline. What's more, the kids are this in their pre-Winding Circle environments. Sandry's an atypical noble, to the point where she actually defends Daja, a member of a hated group of people, when no one else wants to even sit with her. Daja herself has been [[spoiler:cast out by her people]] and has a kind of magic which is taboo in Trader culture. Meanwhile, Tris's frightening and strange behaviour caused her own family to declare her cursed and send her away. Briar's probably the only one who doesn't fit this trope, as he seems to have found a place in his gang. To add a third layer, the classes of the four aren't exactly compatible: Briar lived on the streets, Sandry is incredibly wealthy, and Traders and merchants are sworn enemies. None of them would have dreamed of hanging out with each other. Except perhaps Sandry, who had to play with commoners as a child because other nobles didn't want to associate with her parents.

* TheBlacksmith: Frostpine, and eventually Daja, have magic connected to everything connected to metalworking. Frostpine's other apprentice, Kirel, is not a mage.

* DebtDetester: All Traders, according to Polyam.

* SittingOnTheRoof: One window of Discipline opens onto the roof, which the four kids take advantage of.

* RagtagBunchofMisfits: ''Sandry's Book'' is all about this. None of the kids fit into their original dorms, for various reasons, which is why they're brought to Discipline. What's more, the kids are this in their pre-Winding Circle environments. Sandry's an atypical noble, to the point where she actually defends Daja, a member of a hated group of people, when no one else wants to even sit with her. Daja herself has been [[spoiler:cast out by her people]] and has a kind of magic which is taboo in Trader culture. Meanwhile, Tris's frightening and strange behaviour caused her own family to declare her cursed and send her away. Briar's probably the only one who doesn't fit this trope, as he seems to have found a place in his gang. To add a third layer, the classes of the four aren't exactly compatible: Briar lived on the streets, Sandry is incredibly wealthy, and Traders and merchants are sworn enemies. None of them would have dreamed of hanging out with each other. Except perhaps Sandry, who had to play with commoners as a child because other nobles didn't want to associate with her parents.

* ArtificialLimbs: At the end of ''Daja's Book'', the four present Polyam with an artificial leg they made her, to replace her stump.

* AlliterativeTitle: ''The '''F'''ire in the '''F'''orging''

* ''Briar's Book'', known elsewhere as ''The Healing in the Vine'', in which a plague breaks out in the city, and all four must bring their talents to bear to help the mages find the source - and prevent tragedy from striking in their midst.

* TheBlacksmith: Frostpine, and eventually Daja, have magic connected to everything connected to metalworking. Frostpine's other apprentice, Kirel, is also a metal mage, but only with iron.

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

* 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 realize 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…

* EvilIsNotAToy: More importantly, ''natural phenomena'' are not a toy. Tris blacks out trying to stop the tide from coming in during the first book, the giant earthquake in the same book is caused by a group of mages trying to contain an earthquake, Yarrun dies trying to stop a firestorm in the third book, and by ''The Circle Opens'' Tris comments that even if she ''could'' change the local weather on a greater scale than trapping breezes and the odd lightning strike, [[ButterflyOfDoom it would drastically impact weather patterns across the world]]. Only heavily-specialized Trader mages can manipulate the weather, because only they have the lifetime of training necessary to do so and compensate for the consequences.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In ''Daja's Book'', Briar makes a passing reference to having had nightmares about something horrible happening to Rosethorn. [[spoiler:In the next book she dies of pneumonia, but Briar is able to pull her back from it.]]
** Also in the same book, Daja thinks to herself about ways she could be absolved of her {{unperson}} status, including having someone be so indebted to her that they pay to have her name re-added to the list of Traders (which she dismisses as being unlikely to ever happen). [[spoiler:That's exactly what happens - she rescues Tenth Caravan Idaram from a forest fire and they get her name removed from the list of ''trangshi'']].
* GoodDocBadDoc: The first three books, a rivalry is set up between Rosethorn, one of the main characters' teacher/foster mother, who's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold who due to her GreenThumb genuinely cares for the things she plants. Dedicate Crane, however, is described as petty, mean and much more interested in personal gain. When a plague sweeps the city, forcing them to work together as researchers, these roles just get enforced, with Crane seeming overly cruel to his underlings. [[spoiler: Eventually subverted, when its proven that Crane's strictness was there for ''very'' [[JerkassHasAPoint good reasons]], and he genuinely works hard to help cure the disease.]]

* IChooseToStay: In ''Briar's Book'', [[spoiler: after Briar follows his dying teacher to the afterlife, he threatens to cut his connection to the mortal world and stay with her unless she returns home with him. She relents.]]

** The US titles were simply "X's Book" with X being one of the four leads (Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar in that order).

* InsultToRocks: In Tris' Book, a guard calls pirates 'dogs' and then turns to Little Bear and says, "No offense to four-legged dogs."
* MarketBasedTitle: The first quartet had different title in the US and UK/Australia: The US titles were simply "X's Book" with X being one of the four leads (Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar in that order). The UK and Australian titles were ''The Magic in the Weaving'', ''The Power in the Storm'', ''The Fire in the Forging'' and ''The Healing in the Vine'' (same order).

* NoAntagonist: The only real villains are the pirates in ''Tris's Book''. The other three books have them face natural disasters - there are characters with antagonistic elements throughout, but they are fairly minor. Bullies don't hunt our characters down, a prideful mage doesn't give more trouble than passive-aggressive comments, Dedicate Crane is a perfectionist but for a reason, and not vindictive. Offscreen characters set off two of the disasters without any intent to do harm.

** 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).

** Played straight but {{justified}} late in ''Tris's 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. (His student in the next quartet is female, too.) Two of their other teachers are male but don't live with them. Tamora Pierce has said she chose this deliberately after learning that 3/4 of main characters in young adult fiction (or perhaps young adult fantasy fiction?) were male. He was also the only main male protagonist she'd ever written until the announcement of the ''Exile'' books for the Literature/TortallUniverse.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: A central theme here. The kids are always stronger when they unite their power. [[spoiler: It even allows them to go ''into death'' and save Rosethorn.]]
* PreserveYourGays: Averted in ''Briar's Book'', where [[spoiler: Rosethorn, who is Lark's lover]] is the only member of Discipline Cottage to actually die from the blue pox, but [[spoiler: not permanently, since Briar managed to leap into the afterworld and convince her to come back, with the help of his mates and a little intimidation.]] Nor is it even known at that point that they are lovers.
* RagtagBunchofMisfits: ''Sandry's Book'' is all about this. None of the kids fit into their original dorms, for various reasons, which is why they're brought to Discipline. What's more, the kids are this in their pre-Winding Circle environments. Sandry's an atypical noble, to the point where she actually defends Daja, a member of a hated group of people, when no one else wants to even sit with her. Daja herself has been [[spoiler: cast out by her people]] and has a kind of magic which is taboo in Trader culture. Meanwhile, Tris's frightening and strange behaviour caused her own family to declare her cursed and send her away. Briar's probably the only one who doesn't fit this trope, as he seems to have found a place in his gang. To add a third layer, the classes of the four aren't exactly compatible: Briar lived on the streets, Sandry is incredibly wealthy, and Traders and merchants are sworn enemies. None of them would have dreamed of hanging out with each other. Except perhaps Sandry, who had to play with commoners as a child because other nobles didn't want to associate with her parents.
* RealityEnsues: In ''Briar' Book'', Tris and Niko have to investigate the city's AbsurdlySpaciousSewer. Standard fantasy fare... except that they go in wearing protective gear and ''both'' of them freak out at having to wade through knee-deep human waste with unseen lumps occasionally colliding with their boots.
* RenownedSelectiveMentor: Niko, the incredibly famous vision mage, personally trains Tris the weather mage. The children later learn that Rosethorn, Lark, and Frostpine are equally renowned mages. {{Justified}} due to the law about discovering mages--they have to find a teacher in that field of magic, and if one can't be found, they must teach the student themselves (which is the case with Tris; weather mages are quite rare).
* ShoutOut: A small one in ''Sandry's Book''. Sandry briefly mentions her growing powers can work on straw too because you can [[{{Literature/Rumpelstiltskin}} spin straw.]]

** In ''Magic Steps'', that ability is the reason why Sandry, and only Sandry, can take on the unmage. Unmagic is the absence of true magic, so only Sandry or another unmage could counter the Dihanur's unmage.

* 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. [[note]] Trader mages are said to be the only ones capable of manipulating and controlling the raw forces of nature without issue. [[/note]] Niko himself describes Trader mage training as "learning to be a puff of wind - and nothing else - for 10 years".

* 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 realize 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…

* HeroicRROD: [[spoiler: Yarrun dies when he tries to stop a forest fire that's too powerful for him.]] He's not a hero, but otherwise fits the trope.

A series of young adult fantasy novels by Creator/TamoraPierce which follows the FourTemperamentEnsemble of Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar as they train to become mages in the independent duchy of Emelan.

''Circle of Magic'' follows four [[KidHero children]] who are all [[AllOftheOtherReindeer outcasts]] with different elemental powers as they train at a magical academy and learn about their abilities, while various disasters [[TrueCompanions lead them to consider each other as family]].

''The Circle Opens'' describes their journeys into the outside world as they find apprentices of their own to train in their arts.
* ''Magic Steps'', in which Sandry takes on a student with dancing magic, who fears he'll never fit into his police (or "harrier") family, especially when assassins stalk the streets under cloak of "unmagic"…
* ''Street Magic'', where Briar gets involved in the gang wars that begin to center around his reluctant pupil, a headstrong (former) slave girl with ambient stone magic.
* ''Cold Fire'', in which Daja's discovery of mage twins (one a woodworker, the other a cook) takes second place to her trying to hunt down a deadly arsonist with a grudge.
* ''Shatterglass'', where Tris, always the prickly one, has to teach a glass-and-lightning magic user in order to try and track down a serial killer.

''The Circle Reforged'' continues the story of the original four, but also of their students and teachers.
* ''Will of the Empress'' reunites the foursome as they enter adulthood and have to stay ahead of the titular Empress's schemes while sorting out their interpersonal issues. This book was originally going to be titled ''The Circle Reforged'', because it focuses on the protagonists re-establishing and transforming their old bond.
* ''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''. It was first released as a full cast audio book before being adapted into a novel. Unlike the other ''Circle'' books, which are told in third person, this one is narrated by Evvy in first person.
* ''Battle Magic'' tells the story of what happened to Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Gyongxe, events that color the previous two books.
* An untitled fourth standalone book that will follow Tris as she enters Lightsbridge University to study academic magic.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Tropes present throughout]]
* BerserkButton: Individual ones vary, but the four main characters have one in common: if you mess with their family (adopted or blood), their teachers, or their students, prepare yourself for a whuppin'.
* BlessedWithSuck: Have the wrong kind of ambient magic with no teacher to help and this is the result. Those with magic tied to natural forces, like Tris's weather magic, usually die from their own powers if they can't find a teacher.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: From a young age, the four Circle members are all basically decent people with a strong set of morals; even former street-thief Briar has an enormous sense of [[HonourAmongThieves honor]] and fair play. Yet let them give into the temptation to vent, grumble or put off unpleasant business every ''once'' in a blue moon and the nearest authority figure will jump down their throat. This makes sense when the stakes are high, or their magic threatens to break out, but not so much when a tired child is fed up of having so much pressure on them that their temper snaps for five seconds.
* CastFromHitPoints: At first, doing any magic deliberately is very draining. The more a mage learns to control their power, the less tired they are after using it, although "great-spells" (ex. Frostpine and Daja's spell in the harbor, in ''Tris's Book,'') can render anyone who does them exhausted. Even worse for novices who do great-spells with no one to guide them: they've been known to get caught up and feed all their magic and energy into the spell, unintentionally killing themselves. The climax of ''Sandry's Book'' implies this might have happened to Daja and Briar had Sandry not spun the four together.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Justified, for practical and ecumenical purposes, in the Living Circle temples. All novices wear white, but earth mages wear green, air mages yellow, fire mages red, and water mages wear blue. Senior dedicates wear a black border on their robes, and the Supreme Dedicate, Moonstream, wears a gold border on her blue robes.
** Also a part of Trader culture. They assign colors to aspects of life and then follow through completely: crimson red for mourning, blue to protect against evil (so little children frequently wear blue), and Trader mages, or ''mimanders,'' wear nothing but head-to-toe lemon yellow.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Tris is most often called a weather-witch, and she does work mainly with wind, rain and lightning, but her magic is with all kinds of elemental currents and waves, such as the force of the tides, seismic energy and convective energy, giving her power over lava, earthquakes and the sea. Add in the fact that she can see magic, use academic magic, and is the one-in-a-generation who can scry the wind; she's definitely unsettling even to magic users.
** In the first series, especially ''Daja's Book,'' the four students' magic bleeds into one another, which results in a temporary, and definitely unwanted, version of this; Briar sprouts lightning, Daja's magic shapes iron into a living, growing vine and Sandry chars embroidery by casting her magic into it. Notably, the only one who ''doesn't'' manifest magic from one of her foster-siblings? Tris.
* ContinuityDrift: The sources of ambient magic have become more anthropomorphized as the books go on. They always have been, to some degree (Sandry "frightens" some wool during the first book), but it's usually been a case of mages being able to relate to their own source of magic. By ''Melting Stones'', the ocean speaks directly to Evvy the stone mage and is openly malevolent towards her. Natural events are also more tractable. In the first book, Tris nearly kills herself by trying to stop the tides along a short stretch of beach; in ''Melting Stones'' (again), Evvy [[spoiler:prevents a Vesuvius-expy volcano from erupting with a good deal of persuasion and trickery]].
* CoversAlwaysLie: Despite Tris being frequently described as overweight, none of the book covers that feature her reflect this. At most, she just has baggy clothes.
** However, this may be a case of UnreliableNarrator: while Tris is bullied about her "weight" in the past, and it is mentioned in her narration, none of the other viewpoint characters notice or comment on it, even at their most hostile.
* EarthyBarefootCharacter: Rosethorn and Briar. They even have their first bonding moment about this.
* ElementalPowers: The way ambient magic works, although its a ''lot'' more flexible that the traditional four, or even the other more creative ones listed on the trope page. We've seen earth, metal, weather, plant, carpentry, cooking, glass, ''thread''...
** Oddly enough, there was one set of covers which put Sandry and Tris's Books together in a single volume, and Daja and Briar's in another. They were respectively called, "Water and Fire" and "Air and Earth", even though those categories make ''no'' sense. [[note]] Briar could possibly work as earth, but Daja's magic fits both earth ''and'' fire. Tris could probably be put under the categories of air, water and earth, while Sandry's thread magic really doesn't fit any of them.[[/note]]
* FantasticRecruitmentDrive: Academic mages test for magic in children, after they reach a certain age.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Emelan seems to be the south of France. 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, and Gyongxe is Tibet. Traders have some elements of the Roma, but their cuisine is definitely Lebanese.
* FantasyPantheon: One of the few examples where the actual existence of the gods is ambiguous. Expressly pointed out by Tris in ''Shatterglass'' as she rambles about anything that comes to mind [[spoiler: to a twice-orphaned little girl.]]
--> "I hope you grow to be someone incredible, to repay you for all this misery. Why is it, do you suppose, the gods are said to be favoring you when they dump awful things into your lap? Is it because the other explanation, that sorrow comes from accidents and there are no gods doing it to help you be a strong person, is just too horrible to think of? Let's stick with the gods. Let's stick with someone being in charge."
** Partially subverted in ''Battle Magic'': most religions have at least one temple in Gyongxe because it's said to be the closest place to Heaven, but [[spoiler: while "small gods" like nagas, peak spiders and metal snakes do show up and help in the final battle]], the named major gods of the series - the All-Seeing, Mila of the Grain, the Green Man, Trader Koma and Bookkeeper Oti and so on - don't make an appearance, and the spirit of one of the mountains worshiped by a world religion explicitly states that their myths about him being the sun goddess's husband is untrue.
* FeministFantasy: Unlike the Literature/TortallUniverse, though, it doesn't specifically have JackieRobinsonStory[=/=]YouGoGirl plots, instead being set in a world where gender equality is roughly where it is in present-day RealLife -- maybe even a little ahead. There are countries characters visit where this isn't so, but the characters remark on this.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Not an exact fit, but…
** Sanguine: Sandry (cheerful, people-person, prone to arrogance, heart on her sleeve)
** Choleric: Tris (bossy and domineering, passionate, narrow-minded, has a temper)
** Melancholic: Briar (independent nature but still likable, creative, and as of ''The Will of the Empress'', prone to depression)
** Phlegmatic: Daja (calm, reliable, the least likely to jump into something without thinking)
* FriendToAllLivingThings: Ambient magic works like this. It's not even a requirement that a thing be ''living'', as stone mages and thread mages will "befriend" the objects of their craft and speak as though they have feelings.
* GreenThumb: Briar and Rosethorn's magic.
* InverseLawOfUtilityAndLethality: Weather magic. Most rulers are interested for its capacity as war magic or to favor their lands with good weather, which will mess up weather patterns everywhere else.
* LethalHarmlessPowers: All over the place. Plant magic can make deadly pricker-bushes, thread magic can incapacitate anyone who's wearing clothes, etc.…
* {{Magitek}}: Cannonballs in this universe work by filling them with highly volatile substances, leaving a hole in the spells surrounding them, and using a fire spell to ignite them in the air. ''Empress'' mentions a room that's magically cooled and essentially functions as a freezer.
* MartialArtsAndCrafts: Ambient magic, the type which all the main characters have, focuses on anything from plants to weather to weaving to ''dancing''. None of these are [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway particularly weak]] though; all the characters find ways to make their powers useful for fighting, healing, and a wide range of other applications.
* 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. WordOfGod says that Tris keeps the name Chandler because she wants her neglectful parents and abusive relatives to know who she is and what she's become. She wants them to always remember that if they had treated her well, she would now be an honor to their house and a source of income.
* 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.
* MundaneUtility: The main use of ambient magic, whether it be for actual arts and crafts, medicine, scientific research (really), or any use you can think of.
* PersonalityPowers: Downplayed. In ''Briar's Book'' Dedicate Lark complains about the dedicates of the Water Temple being "wishy-washy," emotional, and not too good on planning ahead. But given that a large number of mages in Winding Circle are academic mages, and therefore those dedicates ''chose'' the gods of water, it might be an inversion -- being emotional and wishy-washy led to a person preferring water, rather than the other way around.
* ThePowerOfBlood: Blood can be added to spells to strengthen them. It's considered ethical (but risky) so long as you use your ''own'' blood, but using someone else's blood opens the door to some really nasty magic.
* RequiredSecondaryPowers: Daja, Frostpine, Jory, Olennika, and Kethlun are all resistant to heat, as their magic involves working with it. It's implied that there are other mages who [[AvertedTrope aren't so lucky]]. Daja's resistance only goes so far - she can handle any normal fire's heat without a second thought, but when dealing with the molten rock under the world's crust, she would melt without shields.
* ShoutOut: Pierce has revealed that Rosethorn's appearance and personality were heavily inspired by Kira Nerys from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.
** At Winding Circle, the First Dedicate of the Fire Temple is [[Franchise/StarWars General Skyfire]], who had a massive change of heart and left his armies to live in the peaceful temple community when his wife and unborn child died, an exact inversion.
* ShownTheirWork: The author's notes usually have her crediting a lot of people for the knowledge about [[BreadEggsMilkSquick sailing, glassblowing, the psychology of serial killers, etc.]]
* SingleTear: A couple characters do this; mostly it's because they're about to start crying, and they wipe it away and force themselves to get past it because it's a bad time to cry.
* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: There's an academy in Lightsbridge for mages to gain accreditation in particular fields. One mage describes the principle of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility reproducibility]] (although Daja dismisses it as part of his general unpleasantness). A good chunk of ''Briar's Book'' is spent in a sterile microbiology lab to study the MysticalPlague, and ''Shatterglass'' involves a conference of vision mages.
* ThatOldTimePrescription: This is present in the series even to the point of actually using willow bark tea by name for headaches and fevers and the like. At one point there is an epidemic and very modern steps to quarantine the disease and develop treatments through experimentation are undertaken. Somewhat justified in that magic has allowed people in that universe to be much more knowledgeable about the mechanics of the world.
* ThemeTable: Four adopted siblings, each with a particular kind of magic, a teacher, a student, and a tendency to not fit in wherever they go.
* TrainingTheGiftOfMagic: Mages have a law whereby, if a mage discovers anybody with untrained magic (usually children, but the occasional adult does pop up), the mage is required to become their teacher, or find someone better for the job — the reason being that magic can be quite dangerous to people if they don't learn to control it.
* TrueCompanions: The defining relationship of the four protagonists, despite [[spoiler:it having been created by magic]] and their often complaining about each other's flaws; they themselves, following the language of their world, describe their relationship as that of siblings, or, if you press, them as foster-siblings. Briar refers to the girls as his "mates", a gang slang term.
* UnEqualRites: Users of Academic magic and Ambient magic don't always get along very well.
* {{Unperson}}: Daja's status among Traders as ''trangshi.'' As she is the SoleSurvivor of her family's shipwreck, the first Traders that she found again assumed her to be cursed with fatally bad luck, and they marked her accordingly with a staff capped in flat, unmarked bronze (all other Traders' staves have some symbols of their family and life on them). Other Traders won't interact with her or acknowledge her presence at all, and in ''Daja's Book,'' when Polyam has to interact with her to purchase Daja's superb metalwork, the older woman has to go through numerous (inconvenient) ritual purifications.
** Polyam herself is a [[DownplayedTrope downplayed example]] of this trope, hailing from the same culture. She survived a landslide but lost a leg and an eye, and was terribly scarred to boot, and it seems that Traders regard her similarly cursed to Daja. She's the daughter of the caravan's leader, but since her accident is demoted to the lowest place on the Trader social rung -- interacting with outsiders to get needed supplies and services unrelated to bargaining. Before the accident she was the caravan's best horse tamer, but afterwards her lost leg, combined with Trader's apparent CripplingOverspecialization (no pun intended) when it comes to a person's place in their society, was not longer "useful" to her people and so lost status.
* WeatherManipulation: Tris' power, which in this case extends not only to the sky (wind, rain, and lightning), but to the sea (tides) and the earth (earthquakes and lava).
* WrongContextMagic: Sandry isn't just a thread mage, she can control ''magic itself'' if she visualizes it as thread. This allows her to fuse together the magic of her and her four friends, turning them from powerful but ordinary mages into mages so much more powerful than anything that came before that they had to be given mage medallions at ''age 13'' (most regular mages don't receive this rank until age 21+). Later on, she uses this ability to counter the otherwise unstoppable unmagic.
** Unmagic itself also fits this trope. The tangible incarnation of nothingness, it can negate any amount of regular magic, negate the laws of space and time (allowing the wielder to jump from one place to another), erase physical objects from existence, and make its wielder invisible to any form of perception whatsoever.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Circle of Magic'' Quartet]]

--> "There's an advantage to instructing young mages: suggestion counts for so much with you four."

[[/folder]]

[[folder:''The Circle Opens'' Quartet]]
* AchievementsInIgnorance: Each of the students uses their power in this way. Pasco dances "luck" into fishing nets, for example, and Keth creates a living glass dragon.
** Neither of which was intentional. Pasco danced a traditional luck jig, but with his magic "imagined fish jumping into the net"; he didn't think it would work, but had been bribed to try due to having small successes with minor things after having danced before them. Keth didn't know he even had lightning magic, and was simply trying to regain his technical glass skill when his magic got loose.
* AntiMagic: Unmagic in ''Magic Steps''.
* AsleepForDays: In ''Shatterglass'', Tris exhausts her store of magical power and as a result sleeps for a week.
* BloodierAndGorier: The first quartet wasn't devoid of violence and death (what with the pirates in Tris's book) but this quartet has much more graphic depictions, from messy strangulations to the end of ''Magic Steps'', where [[spoiler: Sandry's use of the unmagic net basically causes the assassins to explode all over the room]]. And that's ''after'' several scenes of post-assassin work.
* BodyHorror: Do ''not'' activate any one of the four main characters' berserk buttons. Some deaths include [[spoiler: being torn apart and cannibalized by plants, being burned alive from the inside out, and having certain body parts violently ripped away]].
* TheBully: Pasco's cousin Vani. He constantly teases Pasco for dancing, and it's his threat to beat Pasco up in "training" that causes Pasco's first deliberate use of magic.
* ChekhovsGunman: One of the mental ward patients at the hospital in ''Cold Fire'' is lucid enough to help Daja [[spoiler: evacuate the rest when the hospital is firebombed]]. He shows up again in ''Will of the Empress'', receiving a name and a [[BlessedWithSuck tragic backstory]].
* ChekhovsSkill: Pasco uses his magic to attract loads of fish to the local waters at the start of ''Magic Steps''. At the end, he [[spoiler:does the same thing, but with the unmagic assassins.]]
* ContinuityNod: In ''Shatterglass'', Tris sees a tiny, misplaced jungle full of Briar's magic [[spoiler: from the climax of ''Street Magic'']] and what might be one of the fires in Kugisko during ''Cold Fire''.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Glass and lightning, although the guy with them has a ''lot'' of trouble getting the hang of it.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Niko finding the four kids in the first quartet is justified, since he's a seer and scryed them all before picking them up. In this quartet, though, the four all just happen to encounter ambient mages in their widespread travels.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Unmagic, despite the horror-inducing description from a mage viewpoint. [[spoiler: The one using it is just a kid, and enslaved at that]].
* DeathOfAChild: All over the place:
** ''Magic Steps'': A horrified Sandry has to pull a child who had been reduced to a Soulless Shell apart with magic along with his captors in order to save her student. His captors also murdered an entire family, including an baby whose body Sandry sees, earlier in the book.
** ''Street Magic'': A bunch of street kids get murdered by gangs and a vile noble woman who knows she can get away with it.
** ''Cold Fire'': An arsonist sets fire to a home where children are having a party and several of them die. When Daja tries to save an infant from the fire he suffocates while she's carrying him out.
* DemocracyIsBad: Tharios, at least in Tris's opinion. The Assembly is corrupt and spends a lot of time blaming things on each other; up until that point, Tris had only experienced monarchies with RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething. However, the Assembly doesn't do a whole lot to contradict her opinion either.
* DeusExMachina: In ''Shatterglass'' we never get any explanation for why Keth was able to make globes that predicted the Ghost's killings. Given that glass is commonly used in scrying, his ability to make Chime is similarly unexplained, and there are no explanations for why some characters can scry and others can't, it's likely just magic.
** As all this happens after his accident, it's another example of LightningCanDoAnything.
* DirtyHarriet: In ''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.
* EmptyShell: Prolonged exposure to unmagic causes a person to become this.
* EvilFeelsGood: [[spoiler:Ben Ladradun]], the arsonist in ''Cold Fire'', realizes he ''likes'' killing people in fires, and goes from trying to teach people to respect fire to just plain killing everyone he can.
* FantasticDrug: Dragonsalt in ''Magic Steps''. It's a highly addictive stimulant similar to meth, deemed so dangerous that dealers are executed. The assassins use it to keep their unmage pliant. Later, they take it themselves to counter the listless apathy caused by unmagic. It also makes them much more violent in their crimes, and long term use makes the user a hollow shell of themselves with no want except more salt.
* FantasticHonorifics: Each country the kids travel uses untranslated forms of address (seemingly equivalent to ''mister'' and ''ms'') along with a separate one for mages, which may or may not be gender-specific. For example, ''dhaskoi/dhasku'' (male/female) is the word for "mage" in Tharian, while in Namornese, it's ''viynain/viymese'' (male/female).
* FreshClue: In ''Shatterglass'', the more lightning in Keth's blown glass, the closer they are to the time of murder (unfortunately, that also means they can't see the location, murderer, or victim until it's too late). Dema, Tris, and Niko also have a significant amount of trouble talking the religiously sterile bureaucracy into letting them look for fresh clues before a site is magically cleansed of all evidence.
* 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 prathmuni]]. Tris, however, thinks that this was just a fantasy they made up to justify it.
* GangOfHats: The street gangs in Chammur all identify themselves with different signs: Camelguts with green sashes, Gate Lords with colorblocking outfits, and Vipers with a nose ring. Briar mentions that his old gang sign was a blue armband.
* 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.
* 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.
* InfantImmortality: Averted in ''Magic Steps'' when a baby is specifically mentioned as being killed during a massacre. In addition, at one point in ''Cold Fire'', a house burns down where a child was having a birthday party and sleepover. Not all of them make it.
* 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.
* IOweYouMyLife: Alzena the assassin in ''Magic Steps''. [[spoiler: She feels indebted to the Dihanur family for taking her in after her parents' murder and giving her a husband.]]
* JerkAss: Jebilu Stoneslicer in ''Street Magic'', a FatBastard stone mage who used his influence to ''outlaw'' all other stone mages in Chammur (a city that really needs multiple stone mages, as it's primarily on/in rock) so he wouldn't have to compete with anyone, tries to shirk his teaching responsibility to Evvy, and who is refused by Evvy once Rosethorn forces him to do it.
* JerkassHasAPoint: [[spoiler: Ben initially starts setting fires to test his trainee firefighters and prove to the Kugisko councils that they need his firefighters. Setting fires was wrong, but he was actually exactly right- Kugisko is about 95% wood, and fires can break out at any time.]]
* 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]].
* LandOfOneCity: Tharios, a city-state.
* LightningCanDoAnything: Tris's student was an average, talented glass blower before he was hit by lightning. He's still partly paralyzed 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. Previous to that, he had a tiny bit of ambient glass magic.
* MagicDance: In ''Magic Steps'', the power exhibited by the young mage boy Sandry finds.
* MauveShirt: ''Magic Steps'' has [[spoiler:Wulfric Snaptrap, an irascible but likable harrier-mage who Sandry helps to investigate the Rokat murders. He's abruptly killed when they enter the latest crime scene.]]
* MerchantCity: Chammur in ''Street Magic'' sits on the intersection of trade routes between Yanjing and a few Pebbled Sea countries, attracting buyers and sellers from all over. Much of the book happens in souks, as Briar sets up a stall himself.
* 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]].
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Of course, [[spoiler:by using Daja's gloves, Ben allows investigating mages to trace him by tracing Daja's magic. Which means that he gets caught since the mages know that Daja isn't setting the fire. Daja also catches up to him and uses the gloves to create impromptu handcuffs]]
* NoDeadBodyPoops: Averted with the strangling deaths in ''Street Magic'' and ''Shatterglass''.
* PowerIncontinence: The reason why it's so important that all the new mages have proper teachers, though none more so than Keth, who found himself burdened by chaotic and uncontrolled lightning magic after being struck by lightning.
* {{Pyromaniac}}: The arsonist in ''Cold Fire''. [[spoiler: Who turns out not to be a mage at all.]]
* RenownedSelectiveMentor: 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.]]
* RightForTheWrongReasons: Tharians believe that dead bodies spread death to those who touch them, and as such have anything connected to a dead body cleansed completely. In addition, they have a rigorous sanitation program for garbage and sewage. They attribute the city's survival of a hideous plague to these practices and while it surely did the job, they think the matter is of ''spiritual'' pollution, not germs - therefore it's more important to cleanse a crime scene than allow it to be investigated, and it's okay for the already-polluted ''prathmun'' caste to be forced to live where sewage pipes are dumping into the river. They also don't clean up after the bodies of animals so stringently as it's only the "highest form of life" that carries this kind of pollution.
* ShownTheirWork: An interesting variant in ''Shatterglass''. Proper glassblowing terms are used and the techniques described are real, but some of the injuries suffered by the glassblowers are downright bizarre. Keth and first-time glassblowers accidentally breathe in and inhale drops of glass — in reality, molten glass loses heat so quickly it would be solid less than an inch down the blowpipe, and it's too thick to be affected by someone simply inhaling. Long hair does occasionally get singed while glassblowing if left loose, but singeing one's eyebrows as described in Keth's recollections would be close to impossible. On the other side of the coin, a still-molten Chime lands on Keth's head and all this does is set his hair on fire, when the heat would have easily given him a third-degree burn.
** Though that last is {{Justified}}, since would later confirm that Keth's glass magic gives him heat resistance as one of the RequiredSecondaryPowers.
* SiblingYinYang: Jory and Nia in ''Cold Fire''. Jory is outgoing and energetic, while Nia is quiet and focused.
* StreetUrchin: Evvy and the gang kids that Briar befriends in ''Street Magic.''
* StrictlyFormula: Circle kid leaves Winding Circle with teacher, finds kid with ambient magic, teaches kid with ambient magic while simultaneously trying to solve a strange series of crimes, with some help from local mage police. It's not ironclad, though--Sandry actually stays in Emelan, and Daja is able to find other ambient mages in Kugisko to do the lion's share of teaching for the Bancanor twins. And Tris' student is an adult, which creates quite a different dynamic.
* TakesOneToKillOne: In ''Magic Steps''. The nature of unmagic is the absence of true magic, so the only way to stop the unmage is with unmagic. Since Winding Circle has no unmages, the only thing that can do that is Sandry's ability to spin magic.
* 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]].
* VillainousBSOD: After being caught, [[spoiler:Ben ends up in a mute state. At his trial, he's unable to speaks to defend himself, though by that point everyone knows he is guilty]].
* 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 woman in one, he realizes he ''likes'' the feeling and that people are listening more closely to boot]].
* WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway: The reaction of the Acalons, a police family, to finding out that Pasco has dance magic. That is, until Sandry explains and demonstrates some potential uses of dance magic--attracting criminals towards them, for instance.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: In ''Street Magic'', a potential teacher for Evvy gives Briar money to send her to Winding Circle instead. Since the mage also insulted Evvy, Briar refuses. Once the mage has left, with the money still sitting out, Briar realizes he could go back and pocket it for himself, but he chooses not to.
* WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent:
** Pasco's siblings, cousins, parents, and adult relatives are forever shaking their heads at his flibbertigibbet ways.
** Keth's family used to give him some flak for only having a tiny amount of glass magic, but he always reminded them that his considerable mundane skill made up for it.
* 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.
** In addition to Sandry's magic manipulating thread, she can also use it to manipulate ''magic itself'' by visualizing it as thread. Lark specifically states that she's never seen or heard of another ambient mage who can do that, [[spoiler:when explaining to the Duke why Sandry is the only one who can counter the unmagic-using assassins.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Circle Reforged]]
* AChildShallLeadThem: The God-King of Gyongxe is about Evvy's age. She and Briar think it's a pretty harsh job for a kid.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Sandry's family is revealed to breed mules. A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, and they're always sterile, meaning you can't actually breed them in family lines the way something like horse breeding works. This has led to a theory that they actually use magic to create fertile mules. Alternately, "breed" could have been a shorthand for their having found the best horse-donkey combos for ideal mules, but that's less fun than wacky magic.
* BadBoss: Servants to the Yanjingyi emperor who fail to please in some way are beheaded, at best.
* BigDamnHeroes: After [[spoiler: Fin]] abducts Sandry, she calls Briar for help, so ''he'' calls Tris to help him get Sandry from a secret underground room. Tris literally blows the door open, scattering the guards and their gear, then holds them in place with lightning while Briar saunters in after her to free Sandry.
* BlessedWithSuck: Zhegorz in ''Will of the Empress'', first seen as an unnamed but helpful mental ward patient during the [[spoiler:hospital fire]] in ''Cold Fire''. 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.
** Sandry's land property in Namorn is the source of her troubles in ''Will of the Empress'', as the Empress wants to keep her in Namorn, and various Namornese nobles attempt to marry her (that is, force her into a marriage with them), all so they can have those lands for themselves. After Sandry [[spoiler: and Tris]] suffer very badly from all this, Sandry is forced to [[spoiler: sign over her lands to her cousin Ambros]].
* BuriedInAPileOfCorpses: In ''Battle Magic'' [[spoiler:Evvy is thrown in a pile of corpses when she uses her magic to convince her Yanjingyi torturers that she's died in order to keep from breaking and answering their questions]].
* ButchLesbian: [[spoiler: Daja. She's a big girl and, as befits a smith, extremely muscular]].
* CallBack: In ''Magic Steps'', it's established that every time Sandry says "I really must insist", she's about to use her magic to remove anyone and anything in her way. In ''Will of the Empress'', Ambros tells Sandry that Empress Berenene is determined to make sure she and her inheritance remain in the empire. Sandry cheerfully says that Berenene seems reasonable, and when it comes time to leave, she's sure that she won't have to insist.
* ConflictBall: All over the place in ''Will of the Empress'', as the four foster siblings all insist on taking just about everything the others say in the worst possible way. Especially annoying is that Briar's big reason for acting the way he does took place completely between books and isn't properly explained until a later prequel.
** Partially explained in that they haven't been together for several years and are getting used to be together again. Little resentments abound. Sandry felt left behind when the others extended their travels. Sandry, Daja, and Briar are all wealthy now from their magic, while Tris scrapes by because she can't use her magic in a profitable, non-destructive way. Briar has PTSD and doesn't think the others would understand. They are all kicked out of Discipline, due to they are grown adults and the cottage and temple are meant for students and those who've taken vows. Each also has dealt with death closely in some way, and no one wants to talk about it.
* ContinuityNod: It's heavily implied that Nory of ''Melting Stones'' is the daughter of Pauha, the pirate queen Tris killed in ''The Power In the Storm''.
** As mentioned above, Zhegorz, a very minor character in ''Cold Fire'', reappears as one of the supporting cast in ''Will of the Empress''.
* CourtlyLove: Briar has this toward Berenene in ''Will of the Empress''. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]].
* CrazyCulturalComparison: The Gyongxin tradition of sky burial.
* CutHimselfShaving: After Briar and a jealous courtier get into a fight over Berenene's partiality for Briar, they tell the people who find them that their argument was over magic.
* DefeatByModesty: Sandry makes good use of this, but in a genuinely disabling manner. She undoes every single stitch on their bodies, from clothing to the leather on their armor--and at the suggestion of one of her guards, the tack on their horses to boot.
* DeusExMachina: [[spoiler: Literally in ''Battle Magic''. The gods of Gyongxe humiliate Weishu and kick him out.]]
* DiabolusExMachina: [[spoiler:''Battle Magic'' ends with fighting a very long battle against Weishu's army and successfully holding him off, though with the knowledge that they'll be back again. Then, everyone wakes up in chains with Weishu on the throne because he suddenly always had sleeper agents in the capital… which goes on to set up a DeusExMachina]].
* DisproportionateRetribution: In the beginning of ''Battle Magic'', Emperor Weishu is showing Rosethorn and Briar his rose gardens and finds one moldy plant. First he says he'll tear out the plant and whip the gardeners. Then later, he burns the entire garden. With the gardeners in it.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Ealaga's rebuttal to Ambros near the end of ''Empress''. Replace "kidnap" with "rape" and note the resemblance to modern-day discussions about rape culture, not to mention all the UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming that Berenene engages in. Of course, Briar earlier explicitly calls [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe abduction marriages]] rape.
--> "Each time a man succeeds, we place our daughters and our sisters under new safeguards. We put their lives under new restrictions. We give them new signs that a man in whose company they find themselves might plan to kidnap them. Don’t we teach our women to view all men according to the actions of a few?"
* DomesticAbuse: Sandry meets and uses her authority as ''Clehame'' to rescue an abused woman named Gudruny who was forced to marry against her will.
* DoubleAesop: In ''Will of the Empress'', as Sandry, Daja and Briar prepare for the final fight, Sandry remarks “People shouldn’t always get what they want. It’s very bad for their character.” meaning [[spoiler: Berenene's wish to keep them in Namorn]]. In the end [[spoiler: Sandry realizes that her wish to keep her Namornese land, even after her clash with Berenene, is just as foolish, so she signs the land over to her cousin Ambros.]]
* ExpectingSomeoneTaller: ''Battle Magic'' [[spoiler: Luvo says this to Briar when they finally meet.]]
---> [[spoiler: "I did think you would be larger, from Evumeimei’s descriptions."]]
* FantasticHonorifics: In addition to the Namornese address for mages, the titles used for various noble ranks (clehame/countess, saghad/baron) are used throughout. The glossary at the back says that each title actually translates to a type of weapon. Yanjing also has its own title for mage.
* FantasyContraception: Droughtwort, first mentioned in ''Empress''. Briar uses it. A lot.
* TheEmpire: Yanjing in ''Battle Magic''. It conquers a couple of neighbors during the story and then goes after Gyongxe.
* TheEmperor: Going with the aforementioned Empire, Weishu. He has absolute power and wants to claim Gyongxe because it's the land of the gods. Definitely not the benevolent type.
* ExtendedDisarming: Briar in ''Will of the Empress'', used to intimidate an opponent. Daja helps by carrying on a casual conversation throughout.
* GoldDigger: Several of the men courting and/or trying to abduct Sandry in ''Empress''. It turns out House Landreg is absolutely ''loaded'', and Berenene wants to pair Sandry off to a pliable courtier so that she'll have access to all that income.
* GoodOldWays: "Horse-rump" marriages in Namorn, the nickname for marriage by abduction. In most cases it's done to spice up a relationship or as a way for a couple to elope. However, it can be inflicted on unwilling women as well, and even the Empress has had it tried on her twice. Local authorities tend to be very lenient when a punishment is required for it, as it's a tradition from the Empire's seed country.
** The current regime largely allows it to continue due to the Empress' thought that should a woman not want to wed, she should simply escape like the Empress herself did, not taking into consideration that no one is going to seriously harm or manhandle reigning royalty, and dismissing the notion that the Empress was allowed ample opportunity to escape due to her status.
* 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.
* HandWave: Anytime some apparently traditional/popular Namornese custom or style is mentioned in ''Empress'', where it was absent in ''Cold Fire'', it's explained as only being popular in the western part of the empire.
* 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]].
* IdiotBall: Near the end of ''Empress'' all the kids abruptly adopt a nonsensical NotNowKiddo attitude to Zhegorz warning them about an upcoming kidnap attempt. Granted, they all profusely apologize afterwards.
* IdleRich: In ''Empress'', Sandry is forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that her parents were both selfish pleasure-seekers who didn't care a whit about properly managing their estate.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: The [[spoiler: fer Roths]] gambled away most of their estate. [[spoiler: Shan went to the capital in the hopes that he could marry Berenene and gain access to her riches. Failing that, he tried wooing--and then abducting--Sandry instead]].
* IOweYouMyLife: Rizu towards Berenene. Berenene saved her from an unwanted arranged marriage and gave her an powerful position, ensuring that she no longer had to rely on her family and could look for love as she chose. [[spoiler: This is part of why she refuses to leave with Daja.]]
* {{Irony}}: In Yanjing, cinnabar has the symbolic meaning of long life. Cinnabar contains ''mercury''.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Emperor Weishu is a horrific example of this, because he has unlimited power in Yanjing and is entirely unafraid to use it.
* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Yanjingyi mages all over. They can't even conceive of ambient magic and seem to use every plant and mineral ''against'' its inclinations. For example, they put poison spells in willow wood. Willow, of course, is the basis for aspirin. This is rather {{JustForFun/egregious}} considering that they're able to send a quite cunningly poisoned piece of cloth to Berenene in ''Will of the Empress'', on top of the fact that ''real'' China (where the willow tree originates) figured out its medicinal properties thousands of years ago... without any magic to help.
* LipstickLesbian: Rizuka fa Dalach, Wardrobe Mistress of the Empress of Namorn, is a lesbian.
* [[spoiler: MeaninglessVillainVictory]]: In ''Will of the Empress'', Empress Berenene's goal is to get Sandry to stay in Namorn so that the sizable income from Sandry's estates goes into the imperial coffers and not Emelan's. She also wants the services of Sandry's friends (a powerful weather mage, smith mage, and garden mage) to strengthen her rule. In the end, [[spoiler: Berenene does partially get what she wants as Sandry's only way to escape completely is to sign over her land and titles to her seneschal, but Tris, Daja, and Briar reject the offers of wealth and power and manage to get Sandry out of the country. Sandry isn't really losing any political power since her uncle wants to make her his heir in Emelan where she'll be unfettered by Berenene's rule, and now she and her powerful friends are Berenene's powerful ''enemies''.]]
* NoBisexuals: Averted. ''The Will of the Empress'' states quite clearly that [[spoiler: Rosethorn]] likes both women and men.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Comes in the form of a "fall down the stairs" curse that [[spoiler: Ishabal uses on Tris]]. The description of the injuries and the other characters' horrified reactions to them (with the healers saying it's damn near miraculous she wasn't ''dead'') is quite disturbing.
* NoodleIncident: The four remember the time they tried alcohol. It ended with a barn being destroyed.
* 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, as the others assume that Tris sent him with them to keep him busy [[spoiler:rather than as a genuine substitute for herself while she recovers from injuries]].
* PerceptionFilter: Gyongxe is the home of many gods and things that the gods made (or which made themselves), examples being naga and "cave snakes" (little skulls that move around on a spinal column). However, you lose all clear memory of these things when you leave its borders because they prefer to be left alone.
* PhysicalGod: The tiger gods, big stone statues that smack around enemies. [[spoiler: Some of the gods of Gyongxe take part in the battle against Weishu, and their mortal forms can be killed]].
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Deconstructed; Sandry still wants it to apply, but they've grown older and had so many disparate experiences that they clash more often than not. Then it gets reconstructed.
* PrettyBoy: Berenene keeps her court filled with handsome, young, unmarried men as ornaments and prospective lovers.
* {{Retcon}}: In ''Will of the Empress'', Briar has a mind palace that he created while imprisoned by the Yanjingyi. [[spoiler: In ''Battle Magic'', Briar is only held captive for a few hours and we never see him creating it.]]
* SacredHospitality: It's generally understood that men are ''not'' supposed to abduct their wives inside someone's halls, but only out in the open. Otherwise it's a deadly insult to the liege lord or lady, plus a severe embarrassment that shows they can't even protect someone in their own house.
* SmugSnake: [[spoiler: Finlach]] in ''Empress''. He's terribly smug when he abducts Sandry and tells her all about how she's going to give him an heir and that the Namornese know how to handle mage-wives, but he didn't reckon on her friends.
* 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 adviser.
* StaircaseTumble: Empress Berenene takes out Tris by having Ishabal magically causing Tris to fall down the stairs in a way that will seriously injure her without actually killing her.
* TailorMadePrison: Apparently this is standard practice in Namorn when a man kidnaps a mage for his bride. Sandry winds up in a box filled with magic runes that unravel her power. (Fortunately, her abductor didn't realize that she had some non-thread magic from her link with her friends.)
** Later, when Sandry is freed and demands justice from the Empress, the latter orders that the mage responsible be arrested and placed into "a cell for wizards". Those presumably can block a wide range of magic powers.
* TakeThat: Near the end of ''Empress'', Sandry complains about the way men, in general, treat Namornese women (i.e. as property) after freeing Gudruny from an abusive forced marriage and escaping two attempts on herself. Ambros scolds her with, basically, "not all guys are like that"[[note]]a familiar refrain when women talk about sexism and worse[[/note]]. Ealaga retorts that by legally condoning this kind of misogyny, women ''have'' to assume that any man is a potential abductor and, in fact, even she and Ambros have taught their daughters this sort of caution. So instead of blaming women for resenting legally-sanctioned abuse, they should perhaps stop legally sanctioning abuse and thus remove the root cause of that resentment.
* 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.
** After she is [[spoiler: kidnapped and nearly forced into marriage]], Sandry is understandably distraught. She's perfectly within her rights to be angry at the kidnapper, at the empress, and at the entire custom; what's ''not'' alright is the temper tantrum she throws at Daja for not coming to her rescue (she was having sexy-times, so had blocked off her mind), or angrily insinuating Rizu was in-on-it.
* ThereAreNoTherapists: Averted, although with varying degrees of success.
** Daja first meets Zhegorz in the psych wing of a Namornese hospital, so mental health care exists--but in this case the treatment was likely making Zhegorz worse rather than better, since they misunderstood a major cause of his distress.
** After seeing how afflicted Briar has become when the foster-siblings reunite, Tris insists on Briar seeing a "mind healer" for his PTSD.
* 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]].
* VictimBlaming: Empress Berenene's attitude towards forced marriage is that if a girl "really" doesn't want it, she should just escape. After all, Berenene herself escaped two times, how hard can it be? Of course, she's conveniently ignoring that ''royalty'' is sure going to be treated a lot better and tied up less tightly than a poor peasant girl whose family doesn't have two coppers to their name.
* WarIsHell: The war between Yanjing and Gyongxe in ''Battle Magic''. Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn are exposed to horror and brutality with entire villages razed. We see the results with their behavior in ''Empress'' and ''Melting Stones''--they all seem to have [=PTSD=].
* WrongContextMagic: Ambient magic in Yanjing. They have no clue what it is, can't detect it, and are therefore extremely vulnerable when Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy use it against them.
[[/folder]]

* 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. [[note]] Trader mages are said to be the only ones capable of manipulating and controlling the raw forces of nature without issue. [[/note]] Niko himself describes Trader mage training as "learning to be a puff of wind…and nothing else for 10 years".

** 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.

* BuryYourGays: Averted in ''Briar's Book'', where [[spoiler: Rosethorn, who is Lark's lover]] is the only member of Discipline Cottage to actually die from the blue pox, but [[spoiler: not permanently, since Briar managed to leap into the afterworld and convince her to come back, with the help of his mates and a little intimidation.]] Nor is it even known at that point that they are lovers.

Standalone books continue the story with the original four, but also their students and teachers.

[[folder:Later Books]]

** At Winding Circle, the First Dedicate of the Fire Temple is [[StarWars General Skyfire]], who had a massive change of heart and left his armies to live in the peaceful temple community when his wife and unborn child died, an exact inversion.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Yanjingyi mages all over. They can't even conceive of ambient magic and seem to use every plant and mineral ''against'' its inclinations. For example, they put poison spells in willow wood. Willow, of course, is the basis for aspirin. This is rather {{egregious}} considering that they're able to send a quite cunningly poisoned piece of cloth to Berenene in ''Will of the Empress'', on top of the fact that ''real'' China (where the willow tree originates) figured out its medicinal properties thousands of years ago... without any magic to help.

** Sandry's land property in Namorn is the source of her troubles in ''Will of the Empress'', as the Empress wants to keep her in Namorn, and various Namornese nobles attempt to marry her (that is, force her into a marriage with them), all so they can have those lands for themselves. After Sandry [[spoiler:: and Tris]] suffer very badly from all this, Sandry is forced to [[spoiler:: sign over her lands to her cousin Ambros]].

** Partially explained in that they haven't been together for several years and are getting used to be together again. Sandry, Daja, and Briar are all wealthy now from their magic, while Tris can't use her magic in a non-destructive way. Briar now has PTSD. They are all kicked out of Discipline, due to they are grown adults and the cottage and temple are meant for students and those who've taken vows. Each also has dealt with death closely in some way, and no one wants to talk about it.

* DoubleAesop: In ''Will of the Empress'', as Sandry, Daja and Briar prepare for the final fight, Sandry remarks “People shouldn’t always get what they want. It’s very bad for their character.”, meaning [[spoiler: Berenene's wish to keep them in Namorn]]. In the ens [[spoiler: Sandry realisies that her wish to keep her Namorn land, even after her clash with Berenene, is just as foolish, so she signs the land over to her cousin Ambros.]]

* GoodOldWays: "Horse-rump" marriages in Namorn, the nickname for marriage by abduction. In most cases it's done to spice up a relationship or as a way for a couple to elope. However, it is often inflicted on unwilling women as well, and even the Empress has had it tried on her twice. Local authorities tend to be very lenient when a punishment is required for it, as it's a tradition from the Empire's seed country.
** Is largely allowed to continue due to the Empress' thought that should a woman not want to wed [[BlamingTheVictim they should simply escape]], as she did, not taking into consideration that no one is going to seriously harm or manhandle reigning royalty, and dismisses the notion she was allowed ample opportunity to escape due to her status.

* ThereAreNoTherapists: Averted. Daja first meets Zhegorz in the psych wing of a Namornese hospital, and Tris insists on Briar seeing a "mind healer" for his PTSD.

* [[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.]]

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Sandry's family is revealed to breed mules. A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, and they're always sterile, meaning you can't actually breed them in family lines the way something like horse breeding works. This has led to a theory that they actually use magic to create fertile mules.

* DoubleAesop: In ''Will of the Empress'', as Sandry, Daja and Briar prepare for the final fight, Sandry remarks “People shouldn’t always get what they want. It’s very bad for their character.”, meaning [[spoiler: Berenene's wish to keep them in Namorn]]. In the ens [[spolier: Sandry realisies that her wish to keep her Namorn land, even after her clash with Berenene, is just as foolish, so she signs the land over to her cousin Ambros.]]

* BuryYourGays: Averted in ''Briar's Book'', where [[spoiler: Rosethorn, who is Lark's lover]] is the only member of Discipline Cottage to actually die from the blue pox, but [[spoiler: not permanently, since Briar managed to leap into the afterworld and convince her to come back, with the help of his mates and a little intimidation.]]

* SiblingsInCrime: The two pirate leaders from ''Tris's Book'', "Queen" Pauha and her chief mage Enahar.