Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3 Review

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Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3 Review"Terrier" is one of my favorite Pierce books, quite an upset considering the lens of middle-school nostalgia through which I see the Alanna quartet. With "Bloodhound" I was less thrilled, but since I got to spend more time with the amazing, admirable Beka, I wrote it off as a sophomore slump.
With "Mastiff," I realized Pierce is no longer writing the kind of story I like to read.
Kirkus nailed it when they compared Pierce's approach to a police procedural, and it's this approach which either raises or damns Beka's story depending on the audience. If you enjoy Issue stories, wherein Bad Things are given an unflinching and immediate portrayal, and there are at least one or two Shocking Twists before the wrap, "Bloodhound" and "Mastiff" are for you. If you want a story that tackles internal issues as well the external -- such as identity and ideology, and the conflict between idealism and realism -- then you're better off reading "Terrier" and leaving it at that. I'm sure some people will vehemently insist "Mastiff" contains these issues as well. I disagree, or at least, I disagree that it tackles them with the same immediacy and deeply personal stakes introduced in "Terrier." That book was a young woman's struggle to find her place in a corrupt-yet-beloved community, where her attempts to find a solid moral ground to stand on were further complicated by complex friendships. The last two in the trilogy are a bit of Beka the Super-Dog: capable of toppling insidious political/economic/cultural corruption in a single book, along with Appropriate Sidekicks.
It's obvious my own preference colors my review. But I have to say my disappointment with "Mastiff" isn't limited to the constraints of its ambition. There were narrative jumps, especially when it came to character motivations, which I simply did not buy. I can't get specific without spoilers. But I'm not saying I refuse to believe the characters would act a certain way because they're Good (i.e. I love them) or Bad (i.e. I hate them). I'm saying Pierce failed to make it feel real to me, and it's a sad ending to a writer-reader relationship that once had me deeply emotionally invested in a cross-dressing, goddess-touched knight trainee and her magical cat companion. Or, more recently, in an underdog slum girl who communicated with whirling clouds of dust and ghost-ridden pigeons. If I could say "I buy it" to things like that, but not to motivations based in emotional logic and realistic relationships, something crucial has gone missing.
I can't give "Mastiff" less than three stars, because it's still a competently-written, solid book. And it addresses a worthwhile issue and unorthodox material for a fantasy romp. (Whether the awareness of said issue translates at all to our world, considering its specific fantasy context, is a bit more questionable.) But the end of this trilogy feels massively divorced from its beginning in terms of focus and relationships. If The Legend of Beka Cooper had started the way it finished, I would have been content to say "not for me" and let bygones be. But I think such a swerve is telling, and can't help but view "Mastiff" through my wish of what might have been.Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3 Overview

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