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.

How to read this series

Read The Circle Opens only after finishing Circle of Magic -- it assumes you already know all four leads and their established magical bond, and doesn't re-introduce them. Within the quartet itself, read in publication order -- Magic Steps (Sandry), Street Magic (Briar), Cold Fire (Daja), Shatterglass (Tris) -- though each book focuses tightly on one character and can be read somewhat independently once you've finished Circle of Magic; the four aren't as tightly sequential as Circle of Magic's single ongoing plot. The follow-up trilogy, Circle Reforged (The Will of the Empress, Melting Stones, Battle Magic), continues the same four characters afterward.