Quirk Review: Mastiff (Beka Cooper #3) by Tamora Pierce

From Goodreads:

The Legend of Beka Cooper gives Tamora Pierce's fans exactly what they want—a smart and savvy heroine making a name for herself on the mean streets of Tortall's Lower City—while offering plenty of appeal for new readers as well.

Beka and her friends will face their greatest and most important challenge ever when the young heir to the kingdom vanishes. They will be sent out of Corus on a trail that appears and disappears, following a twisting road throughout Tortall. It will be her greatest Hunt—if she can survive the very powerful people who do not want her to succeed in her goal.

PREFACE:

Beka Cooper is one of my favorite Pierce characters so of course I was going to finish this series by reading the final installment, Mastiff. But was it a fitting end for the legend that is Beka Cooper?

Mostly.

WRITING:

As I've said in my reviews for Terrier and Bloodhound, the writing in this series has been some of my favorite. While I did think the writing was slightly less vivid this go around, it was still a well-written story. I think the disconnect came from the story itself, not the words chosen to tell it, but there was a lack of spark that I missed from the previous books.

SETTING:

This novel was kind of like the equivilent of the fantasy road trip novel. The characters were traveling all over the kingdom, pursuing a stolen boy, and while I like in Pierce's novels to really dig in to one place, I liked the forward motion the traveling provided in this one. We get to experience a wide range of settings that really make Tortall seem more real and developed. The "rest of the kingdom" is no longer a vague thing; it has shape and substance and is inhabited by different kinds of people. The traveling also kept Beka constantly on duty, and I love her best when she is being the tenacious Dog that she is.

CHARACTERS:

Beka was a little different in this book, and I feel Pierce may have been trying to express something that didn't quite come across as clear as it should have. At the beginning Mastiff, Beka has been in a serious relationship with a guy we find out is not that great, and this is about three years after the end of the last book. Beka seems to have become complacent, especially in the romance area, and all that tenacious fire that was her trademark seems gone. It is only as the story gets going and the hunt begins that Beka returns to herself as I knew and loved her.

I think perhaps Pierce was attempting to show that Beka had grown up. After all, she was no longer the young adult from Terrier, she was a woman with years of guard experience. She would have changed, and I think that was what Pierce was getting at. However, the allowing of an unworthy man in her life seemed to be too out of character for Beka. It would have been one thing for her to date him, see him as he really was, and drop him, as many readers I think would have expected her to do, but that wasn't the case. Beka had stayed with him despite his faults, faults that before, Beka would have not put up with.

When it comes to all the other characters, I enjoyed the King, Queen, and Prince, as well as the variety of mages, nobles, slaves, and common folk that appear all over the place. It was nice to see more of Sabine and Tunstall together, and I liked Farmer at first, but by the end, he was one of my favorites. Pounce and Achoo were great as always. But I did sorely miss the other great characters from Beka's crew, especially Goodwin and Rosto.

DOWNSIDE:

When it was said and done, I liked this novel, but there was one major problem I had within the story and another that concerns the entire series.

The first problem is a pretty big spoiler, so I'm going to keep it simple and short and just say I was completely thrown out of the story at one point because there is such a severe out of character event that takes place. I couldn't go along with what the book was telling me was true because it felt utterly wrong and contrived and in the resulting scenes after it occurred, I actually imagined the characters knew I was there and were acting things out for me, and badly. If you read the book, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well, I can say I'd heard something about it before I read it and still couldn't believe it when it happened.

The second problem was that, despite liking the ending of this book, the whole of Beka's story feels incomplete. I saw a lot of complaints that the crew in Corus is left totally behind (having only really been included in Terrier), which after setting up such great characters leaves the reader wondering what the point was of that. I have to agree. I think there should have been another story between Bloodhound and Mastiff that let us see those characters and where their lives were headed, let Beka have another mystery on her home turf, let us see her meeting the one guy she gets with and why she gets with him in the first place. I honestly thought Beka was going to give Rosto a chance at some point, but I never got to even see her turn him down one final time.

I'm not fan-girling this and just wanting there to be more in a series about a character I loved. I understand that authors don't always have enough plots or ideas to write a gazillion books about a certain character. But I really feel that in this case, Pierce abandoned the foundation of the series. It was fun to go with Beka on adventures, but Beka was who she was because of the work she did at home.  Like many readers, I felt I had missed something when starting Mastiff, and because we never got to see Beka in that setting with those original characters again, the conclusion of the series felt ultimately unsatisfying.

COOL STUFF:

One thing this book had that the two previous did not was magic. There was magic all over this one, and that being one of my favorite parts of Pierce's Tortall world, I loved it. There were also more allusions to things that happen in other books, such as wild magic, and anything that connects this story with the others set in Tortall was something I liked seeing. And when it came to connections, I liked what happened at the very end of the novel, going back to George Cooper, and seeing things from that side of the timeline, as well as that perspective (as we've only had Alanna's before).

The other great aspect that I was truly happy with was the outcome of Beka's work in the novel and how things end up for her personally. I felt much as I had when Alanna's story ended, that she got everything I could have wanted for her. While it didn't happen as I originally had imagined it would, I thought the way Pierce worked everything out was better than my expectations.

VERDICT:

While this final installment has a glaring flaw and the overall set up of the series dims its awesomeness, Mastiff was still a pretty good novel. There were parts that I truly loved and lots of action to enjoy, with loads of magic for those that have been missing it from this series. While the whole thing may not be how I or other readers would have wanted it, I was pleased with the outcome for Beka herself and am glad that Pierce created another amazing heroine.