Tammy: Writing music for this book,* particularly this chapter: Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Why? Disney’s “Fantasia,” my inspiration for two books in this quartet!**
Tammy: As for Daine, and consequences, and she didn’t think about this: she’s 14; she lived a VERY sheltered life for her first 13 years and was then pitchforked into a world she couldn’t even imagine; her body has been subjected to countless traumatic physical and chemical changes; she lost her family, and now in this new and very threatening environment, she has lost yet another person who is close to her. She has been threatened, thoroughly monkeyed with by a goddess, drugged, and imprisoned.
She is not going to be able to think about consequences. (That she thinks about some is a miracle.) She is not going to think about the consequences to Tortall or anyone else in the wider scheme of things. She has basically switched to “Hulk SMASH” mode. If she were tried in court, her attorney would register a plea of temporary insanity, and s/he could make a very good case for it.
She has also seen that no one can stop Ozorne. Think of all the tyrants you have seen in charge of countries, all the monsters who murder their own people and get away with it while the rest of the world wrings its hands and those who plot rebellion disappear. The president of Syria. The ruling junta of Burma. Hitler. Stalin. Idi Amin. How many times have you wished that one person could take the monsters out? Daine sees that no one else will do it. If they won’t, she will, and if there is collateral damage, they should have taken care of things themselves.
She is 14, and her heart is shattered.
NOTES FROM Words of Tamora Pierce
*Emperor Mage
**Immortals quartet
SOURCE: [MR:EM:9]
Words of Tamora Pierce 