I really like Rosto but I have never seen him and Beka ending up together. They’re both too smart to deny that one of them would either have to make dramatic and, I think, unfair compromises or the relationship would end badly for one or both of them. Actually even with the compromises the relationship probably still wouldn’t work.
Tammy: I’m particularly appreciative of your understanding of Beka and Rosto. Alanna and George were not at all in the same position, and besides, George had to either turn against his noble friends or give up being the Rogue. Fortunately for everyone, the kind of work that would keep him from getting bored was available, or I fear he would have gone back to his old ways. Beka, though, for all her friendships, is not a loose Dog, and Rosto is a Rogue, blood and bone.
I loved Terrier, because it was so realistic about the atmosphere of the time – from bribery to children dying all the time to the vocabulary that substantially differed from the other books. I’m working in Legal History and I appreciate all the work that must have gone into researching how courts and law enforcement worked then. My personal pet peeve with fantasy is when our 20th century sensibilities are enforced on characters who just can’t feel that way.
Tammy: A particular thank-you for this! I have worked very hard to stay as true to the time as I can, crushing my own humanitarian impulses. I have to be so careful in writing about things like crime and slavery for that very reason. These people cannot react as we would. Even Becka’s own anti-slave feelings are rooted in her own near-brushes with it and her discovery that the trade breeds more crime, not a moral feeling that it’s wrong. Humanity won’t develop that for hundreds of years. My research has actually been fascinating. It never occurred to me, before these books, that our modern warehousing form of prisoners is fairly modern, and that prisons were just waystations in the past.
SOURCE: [Random Buzzers – Bloodhound]
Words of Tamora Pierce 