The Circle Opens

About The Circle Opens

The Circle Opens picks up a few years after Circle of Magic, sending Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar out from Winding Circle to take on their own students and travels, one book per character in a rotating structure similar to the first quartet's but now centered on each of the four as a young teacher rather than a student. Each volume follows one of the four -- Sandry's diplomatic troubleshooting in a city gripped by mob violence, Briar's discovery of a street-magic student whose gift connects to a criminal underworld, Daja's mentorship of a troubled magical prodigy, Tris's investigation into a killer using forbidden magic -- while the other three remain present at the margins through the magical thread-bond the quartet formed in the previous series. Where Circle of Magic was fundamentally about four outsiders becoming a family, The Circle Opens is about what that family looks like once its members start operating independently in the wider world, each carrying lessons from their shared childhood into very different adult problems: politics, crime, grief, and the ethics of teaching magic to another troubled child. It broadens Emelan's geography considerably beyond Winding Circle, and gives each of the four leads a fuller, more distinct voice than the more tightly clustered first quartet allowed.