Circle of Magic/YMMV

Complete Monster: One in each of the Circle Opens books:
- In Street Magic, Lady Zenadia, who takes a teenage street gang under her wing and uses them vicariously to fight deadly gang wars just for the hell of it (she's bored with her retirement), while members who displease her get strangled and buried in her garden for fertilizer.
- In Magic Steps, Alzena and Nurhar, who murder members of a rival merchant family, getting away with it because they have a mage who works with "unmagic" to hide them... a crippled, child mage in whom they've cultivated a drug addiction so he'll be totally dependent on them, to the point where he's suicidal and effectively soulless. Illustrated fantastically by the attack on Fariji Rokat's family in the nursery - Alzena kills the baby first, then the little girl, then Rokat, then his wife in case she's pregnant again.

Rokat wouldn't see the blade, only his little girl as she fell over, bleeding. He gasped and lunged for the child, just as his wife had gone for the baby. Alzena stepped into his rush and cut at his neck, smiling. He had seen his children die. That was good.

- In Cold Fire, Ben Ladradun, who secretly sets the fires he puts out, because he likes being hero-worshipped.
  - Forget Ben. He, at least, has some woobie tendencies. Try his MOM if you want physical and mental abuse and a generally unkind attitude.
    - Regardless, she did have a Pet the Dog moment and didn't learn to love killing huge numbers of people.
- In Shatterglass', the nameless murderer, who kills innocent women and displays their bodies to mess with the oppressive class structure of his society -- never mind that the women are victims of the same system and never did a thing to him.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Frequently and awesomely. However, Pierce always chooses to show the characters' remorse over any lives they may have taken, no matter how evil.
Moe: The Japanese book covers, but mostly Tris. Incidentally, Daja seems to have turned into Katara in that last pic.
- The twins from Cold Fire also come off as moe, Nia as the Shrinking Violet variety and Jory as a Tsundere.
- And in their appearance. From what this troper remembers, they have huge eyes.
Nightmare Fuel: Unmagic, from a mage's point of view. Sandry has actual nightmares about it.
- And in the beginning of Tris's Book, it's mentioned that all four are having nightmares about the earthquake in the previous book. Tris gets a wind's-eye-view of the innocent slaves she slaughters in the pirate attack, and Sandry and Briar both deal personally with plagues that kill people close to them. This series is in the "Kids" section at the bookstore?!
Straw Man Has a Point: The Tharians from Shatterglass are portrayed as being dogmatic and unreasonable for having such strict rules about how the dead are treated. But the powerful magic cleansing was started in response to a horrific plague thousands of years ago, when the Tharians figured out that hey, guess what, bodies and sewage breed disease and should be cleaned up and sequestered. They incorporated their methods into their religion--and their Fantastic Caste System, which is indeed oppressive and unethical--but Tris, Niko, and Keth are even disdainful of the idea that dead bodies are a pollution source, when they actually are.
- The Tharians see this as spiritual pollution more than anything, and a distinction is made. Tris and Niko have worked to piece out the source of a horrific plague themselves and know what preparations to take; spiritual pollution to the point that crime scenes are cleansed so thoroughly that investigators can't get much from them is a different issue.
Tear Jerker: One at the end of Briar's Book when Rosethorn dies, and Briar follows her with all three girls providing an anchor at their own risk.
- In The Will of the Empress, Rizu refuses to leave Namorn and come with Daja, thus breaking Daja's heart. Comparing the state Daja was left in with how happy she was with Rizu is enough to make anyone tear up.
Values Dissonance: Tris's assessment of democracy vs. hereditary rulership in Shatterglass, although it's highly unlikely that Pierce holds the same opinion.
The Woobie: Many, many characters have their moments.
- Right in the first chapter of the first book, Sandry locked in a hidden room alone after her parents die and a mob tears her nursemaid apart right outside the door, watching her lamp flame burn low and being terrified of the dark. She's there for two weeks, long enough that when a rescue party comes she thinks she's hallucinating, long enough that when she sees the light from their lamp she screams with pain. Later we find that she lay in a Heroic BSOD for weeks. For long after, she's afraid of the dark.
- Also first chapter of the first book, Daja Kisubo waking up on the ocean after her family died with the ship. She's remarkably good at holding herself together, but when she unknowingly uses her power to call over a chest with food and water she cries, and the narration baldly states that after all, she is young and doesn't want to die. Then her people cast her out because sole survivors are bad luck.
  - In Cold Fire, she has such hero worship of Ben Ladarun and refuses to think much of the mounting oddities of his situation and involvement with the fires he fights, she makes him fireproof gloves... and then near the end of the book it all comes crashing down in the most painful way as she realizes how misplaced her trust was, and that her beautiful invention, designed to help save lives, was happily used to kill more than thirty people. That entire chapter is just so painful.
- Lark's backstory is never really laid out in whole, but she was an acrobat in her youth until she got asthma and ended up living in slums for an unknown length of time. She is very aware of the desperation of great poverty. A Noodle Incident possibly tied to that is that she knows what horse urine tastes like.