Tamora Pierce is a lover of strong female role models and most of her books are aimed towards young women ages 8 - 16. The Beka Cooper series is aimed at an older audience however (I'd say 14 to 30) due to it's size and complexity and not trying to teach life lessons. That being said if your pre-teen is an advanced reader, by all means get them this series. Warning kiddies, this last book does mention smugglers hiding things in their bad bits, but that's pretty much as un-wholesome as it gets in this trilogy.

Mastiff

This Book is set two to three years after the previous book 'Bloodhound'. We find out that Beka was betrothed, that is until her fiancé decided to be an idiot and fight a room full of illegal slavers single handed and got himself killed. What we also learn is that Beka is only upset by all the sympathy due to having lost the love of him for several months before his death. So Beka is privately grateful that she gets called away on an urgent mission in the middle of the night

The King has recently passed a law for all mages to be registered, their tools of the trade to be taxed and for mages to do a mandatory number of days in the service of the realm per year. Needless to say this has garnered the king some powerful enemies and now he's called upon the most trustworthy of the Provosts guards to help him.

The kings family was holidaying in the Summer Palace when someone in the Kings household organised and allowed an attack. A four year old Prince Gareth, the Kings only heir, has been kidnapped. This is the arduous adventure of Beka, Tunstall, Lady Sabine and a new character, a mage by the name of Farmer Cape in there endeavours to find and rescue the young prince.

Thoughts

Now when I say this was an arduous journey, I really meant it. This is one of the harder books for me to get through out of the Tamora Pierce collection. The plot line in good, the telling of it left much to be desired. Beka and co are on a long arduous journey and Pierce makes sure you feel it.

You fall in love with character Farmer Cape and how he loves to yank on the tails of those who believe they are greater than him. There is a plot twist at the end that is simply heart breaking. Otherwise this all leads to how Tortall came to be the way it is in future series, which comprises most of books based in the realm of Tortall.

Finale

I give this book a 5.5/10. It definitely doesn't match the quality of the previous two books in the series. It caters to the fans who want to know about the history of Tortall and not much else. The romance feels forced, the character developement is half hearted, the plot drags out and out and we never get to learn what happened to that oh so intelligent butterfly-breed pup that Pounce promised to do right by. The one time Beka uses a dust spinner seems like it was not needed and only done so that each book had at least one instance of Beka using a spinner.

This is a completionists book. Good thing for Pierce, I'm a completionist and a fan of the world of Tortall.

Want More?

For a run down of the world of Tortall as a whole see my first review of Alanna, The First Adventure. Book One of the Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce.

To get the back story of Beka see my previous two reviews: Book 1: Terrier and Book 2: Bloodhound

My next reviews will be based on the quartet 'The Immortals" by Tamora Pierce, based approximately a decade after the end of the 'Song of the Lioness' series