But the magics of all four young people have become mixed, as they meet one disaster after another, so Daja inadvertently makes and nearly strangles in a plant of living iron which then eats a copper bowl. Sandry has to weave them borders, to get things back under control. I have more than a slight quibble with the illustrator of the book jacket. Daja is riding a horse saddled as no ridden horse ever was. The girth, instead of going under the horse's chest, just behind the front legs, is painted as going around the wide part of the horse's belly, whence it would slide off the first time the horse let out its breath.
Magic is part of the characters' lives, but it is treated like a science.
It must be studied, worked at, and applied with caution after careful experiment. Also, one's personal supply of magic is limited, and must be tended and replenished. Life and death issues of poverty, disease, healing, storms, and loyalties are handled from the viewpoint of the young teen-age mages, whose personal bonds are together strong enough even to go into death and return. These books are set in a world where magic is part of life. Still the young people have to learn to know themselves, and their world, and their parts in it.