A review by liralen
Tortall: A Spy's Guide by Timothy Liebe, Tamora Pierce, Julie Holderman

3.0

Well, that was entertaining. If you've read the Tortall books (especially if you've read them multiple times), you'll be familiar with most of the characters wandering through these pages. It's a mix of material: some straightforward 'here's how to not completely blow your spy cover in the first five minutes', some profiles of various characters who show up throughout the books, some letters...a section of the head cook's diary, which probably goes on a bit too long but is very funny nonetheless. (I'm now pondering why George might choose to include that section, other than the fact that he rates a mention or two, and I could see it being useful either because spies-in-training should look at pleeennnty of things that don't have any straight-up useful info in them—to learn to identify just that—or because there's a very quiet lesson in there about how trust is built and favours are earned.)

Anyway. I wouldn't have minded a bit more new-to-me information: I've read most of the Tortall books at least three times (conservative estimate for some of them!), and there's little about, e.g., Stormwings that can't be found in the novels. That said, there's a wonderful level of detail—not that I needed any further proof that Pierce knows the world she's built extremely well, but I always like knowing that there is a backstory for every minor character, even if the reader doesn't get it all.

One of these days I'm really going to have to sit down with those books and give the entire run a(nother) reread, one after another after another...